Page:The White Slave, or Memoirs of a Fugitive.djvu/306

 daughter of hers, as the children, while calling the old woman "granny," called the younger one "mammy." This younger woman stood at a table, mixing corn cakes in a great wooden tray. She was very poorly dressed, and without shoes or stockings; but with an expression of good nature on her face, and an expressive, soft blue eye, which marked her, however rude and poverty stricken, as one of those tender-hearted females who can never look upon distress without doing what they can to remove it. Enter _ ing into conversation with the women about the weather, crops, distance to Camden, whether they could give me any thing for dinner, and so forth, I presently inquired, as if incidentally, whether they had long lived at this place. "O, law, yes," said the old woman at the loom. "Why, my Susy, there, who, you see, has already a family growing up about her — she was born in this house, and three or four more children, too, older than she, and as many more younger; but they are all gone now, except only her that stays by her old mother."

"Not dead, I hope?" I asked, in a sympathizing tone.

"O, no! not dead," said the old woman, "but as good as dead to me; all gone, all moved off, some to Florida, and some to Alabama, and some to Texas, and that's the last I shall ever hear of them;" and here followed a deep sigh.

"But don't. you sometimes get a letter?" I inquired.

"Get a letter!" said the old woman, with a toss of the head, such as left little doubt in my mind that she had been a smart piece in her day, very different from her good-natured daughter — "get a letter! And which of my sons and daughters, do you suppose, knows how to write, or to read either, for that matter? Poor people here in Carolina don't have any chance at learning; no schools, and nothing to pay the teacher with, if we had any. That's what has made them all move off to seek a living elsewhere. Susy,