Bonaparte and Kilpatrick are working on the flat which needed overhauling and repair. It is a heavy expense, but as the rice is doing well there must be a dry, tight flat to bring it in.
September 10.
Very hot again. This morning I was working at a serenade of Rachmaninoff's when I fainted. Good Chloe got me on the lounge and dosed me with ammonia and I got over it, but could neither write nor read without a return of the terrible feeling. So I had the room darkened and kept quiet until 4:30 when I had to go to the plantation.
September 13.
Miss Penelope sent me word she was unequal to going to church to-day. So I had to play the organ as well as sing. Though a little rickety still, I enjoyed the organ in its rejuvenated condition. It is very sweet and full. A beautiful sermon. Thanked the good Father for his many mercies. The Sunday-school children came promptly at five and were most interesting.
September 14.
Making wine from the scuppernong grapes; ten quarts of grapes made two and a half gallons of wine. It is a very simple process, and yet the wine is very nice. It would make most delicious champagne if we had strong enough bottles to put it in at the right stage, but it bursts ordinary bottles, so we leave it uncorked until that stage passes.
I make it because I find a portion of wine is a most acceptable present to the men of the family at Christmas time—only it must not be too sweet. The scuppernong grape grows so rapidly and vigorously in this soil and climate that it would be worth while to plant it largely for transportation to places where wine is made. In this State it is under the ban, but there is no law to prevent sending out the grapes.
Every negro cottage through the long line of villages which fill the pine woods has at least one scuppernong vine, from which they sell bushels of grapes, besides eating them for a month. One vine will cover several hundred feet of space, for they are never trimmed, but grow laterally on scaffoldings made about five feet and a half from the ground.
They do not grow in bunches like other grapes, but only four or five very large grapes together, so that when you go under an arbor of ripe grapes you see no leaves above you, only a canopy of grapes, the leaves being all on top, and there is no more delicious experience than a half hour under a really old grape-vine in early September.