Page:Memorials of a Southern Planter.djvu/61

 MAMMY HARRIET'S RECOLLECTIONS. 53 women buss out larffin' when we hear 'em talk. Dey was mighty savage people. We butt up wid a whole parcel on 'em ebery day. Dyar was mos' as many o' dem trabellin' as dyar was o' us. I was 'feared on 'em. I nebber see a yaller Injun before. In Figinny dey was dark. De wife o' de chief ask marster to let her hab de ferry-boat to go to see her sick daughter. He had 'gaged it to tik us over. He say 'certainly.' " One day a beggar come 'long, an' marster gib her five dollars. Your pa was always good; good to every- body. "Marster was so good to us. He do eberything on dat journey dat was for our good. " Marster do all he could to comfort he people. " He buy fresh meat, salt fish, eberything. Ef he ^see a turnip-patch or cabbages or apples or 'taters, he say, 'Go on, see if you can get these things.' Sometimes dey gib 'em to us, sometimes we buy. One ole man say, 'I want a 'oman to live wid me. Don't you think your marster would let me have a 'oman or a chile? I would like to buy you. You seem to be a very likely 'oman.' " ' Buy who! buy me!' " And as my dear old black mammy recalls this insult to herself and to her hon- ored master, her dim eyes kindle, her voice is full of suppressed feeling, her frame at its height, her manner such as might become an enraged pythoness. " 'No, not one! Don't you know marster don't want to sell none o' his people? We are follerin' our marster. We ain't no nigger-traders. No, when marster sell any o' his people 'tis 'cause he is made to do it. 'Tis 'cause he cyarn't do nothin' wid 'em himself.'* "We did live like princes, I can tell you. Sich a cookin'! sich a cookin'! We bile greens an' ebery- thing. We live good; we did that. We didn't want for nothin'. All had umberillas, ebery one, an' when it rain you see all dem umberillas go up. whom her master sold was her son.
 * Mammy's testimony here is pathetic. One of the four negroes