Reading with great interest a newly published book, “The Circuit Rider’s Wife,” brings vividly to mind a visitor we once had. She was one of the sweetest and loveliest of women. She was a Methodist, the only one in a wide acquaintance I ever met, who claimed to have “the gift of sanctification.” I do not believe one possesses the power within oneself to resist sin, nor do I mean to inject religious views and doctrines in these remarks about “People I Have Entertained,” but I do say, if there ever was a really sanctified woman it was this Mrs. Abe Smith of Mississippi. She was our guest one short, happy, glorified week. She read her Bible chapter to us every morning, and prayed with and for us all day long, if we wanted, and we generally did, for surely she had the gift of prayer. I never listened to such uplifting prayers as dear Mrs. Smith could utter; her very voice was an inspiration. She was highly connected and highly cultivated and had a vocal training that comprised very intricate music, but with “The Coming of the Lord” she confined her voice entirely to psalms and hymns. Her mission was to pray and sing, but no doubt when the harvest was waiting, in some meeting house, she could exhort with an eloquence equal to the most earnest itinerant in the pulpit. We had one strange glorification and sanctification, but it was interrupted by the coming of a Methodist preacher, who claimed to having sought, in vain, the gift of sanctification. The last few days of lovely Sister Smith’s visit were spent in the library with closed doors, wrestling with the halting soul of Brother Camp.

These were the expiring days of the old “Peace which passeth understanding.” After that came the war, which sorely tried the heart of the glorified woman, and she proved faithful to her gift of sanctification even unto the bitter end....

One November day I entered my library with an open letter of introduction in my hand, to say to the young man, placidly warming himself at the fire, that the letter was not meant for my husband, who was not at home, but for his brother. He replied he understood the brother was not in Louisiana, and he took the liberty of transferring the introductory epistle to the next of kin. He was a young doctor, threatened with lung trouble, who had come South to spend some time in somebody’s sugar house. I frankly told him that our sugar house was not by any means a suitable place for an invalid, but (I glanced out of the door and saw his vehicle had departed and his trunk was on the porch) I would be pleased to have him remain my guest until my husband returned to see what could be devised to further the invalid’s plan. Northern and Western people, who never had been in a sugar house and inhaled the warm fumes of boiling cane juice, night and day, and incidentally submitted to the discomforts of an open building, not intended for sleeping quarters, thought that the treatment, as they chose to call it, was a cure for tuberculosis. My guest found himself quite comfortable, and remained in our home five months. Nothing more was said about sugar house treatment. By spring, like a butterfly, he emerged into the sunlight, strong and well and ready to fly to pastures new, which he did. We did not even hear from that doctor again. He was a physician in good practice in Galveston during the war, and told Gen. Magruder he thought he had met us years before!

Every planter in my day entertained strangers who came and went, like a dream. Some were grateful for their entertainment, some did not so much as write “bread and butter” notes, after their departure.

Queer, inquisitive folks lighted upon us now and then. I recall a party of Philadelphians who arrived at the adjacent town with a note of introduction to the president of the bank. They said they wanted to visit a plantation and see the working thereof. That hospitable husband of mine happened to be passing; he was called in and introduced to the party, and he invited them for the whole of the next day. They came, they saw, I don’t know if they thought they conquered. We thought so, for they were on a tour of observation. They were delightfully informal and interesting people. We accompanied them to the canefield—the negroes happened to be at work quite near the house—into some of the cabins, the infirmary, where they were surprised to find not one inmate, into the nursery where the babies were sleeping in cribs, and the older children eating mush and molasses. They had to taste the food, had to talk to the granny about her babies, had to ask after her health. Meeting a negro man, walking as brisk as anybody, with a hoe over his shoulder, they had to inquire as to his condition, and must have been surprised to hear what an awful misery he had in his back. They had to see where the plantation sewing, and the cooking, were done. I began to think before it was all over we were superintendents of some penal institution and were enduring a visit from the committee of inspection. However, they were very attractive, naïve visitors, surprised at everything. After luncheon, waited upon by a negro boy on a broad grin—it was all so very funny to him—they took their departure, and my husband and I had a merry laugh over the incidents of the day. It was rather an interesting interlude in our quiet life, and remoteness from the abolition storm that was hovering over the land.

All the people I entertained were not queer. We had a house full always of gay, young people, young girls from the North that were my schoolmates in New Haven, girls who were my play-mates, and the friends of my young ladyhood in New Orleans, fresh, bright, happy girls, who rode horseback, sang and danced and made merry all through the house. All are gone now. Only the sweet memory of them comes to me in my solitary day-dreams.

XXVIII
A MONUMENT TO MAMMIES

Let us have a memorial, before the last of us who had a black mammy passes away. We who still linger would love to see a granite monument to the memory of the dear mammy who fostered our childhood. Our grandchildren, indeed our children, will never know the kind of mammies their ancestors were blessed with.

I know of two only of the old stock of nurses and housekeepers left. They were grown women when Sherman marched through Georgia, destroying their old homes, laying waste the land, and Butler sat down in New Orleans, wreaking vengeance on their hapless masters, and scattering their little bands of servants to the four winds. These two mammies I wot of remained with their own white folks. The Georgia one lived in a family I visited, a faithful old woman, doing her utmost to fill a gap (and gaps were of constant occurrence) in any branch of household duty. Mammy was a supernumerary after the children grew up, but when the new-fangled housemaid swept her trailing skirts out of the premises, mammy filled her place till another of that same half-educated sort came. When cook flared up and refused to do her duty in the way to which she was called, mammy descended into the deserted kitchen.