A glorious sunshine, thank the Good Father. I hope I will get the cotton picked to-day and a good many peas, too.
10 p.m. A fine day's work. Took Patty and Goliah in to pick peas, and they did well and enjoyed it. I hear no one has made any peas this year, but I have made a great quantity, which is a great mercy. Patty, Goliah, and I picked peas along with the other hands.
Lizette was there with her little baby, the first time she has had it in the field. It is tiny and sits up very straight and looks like a little black doll. Her little son Isaiah sits and holds the baby all day. I constantly intervened and had its little head kept from rolling off, as it seemed likely to me to do when it was asleep.
I told Lizette about the children in the East Side Settlement House, each baby so comfortable in its basket, with no danger to its little delicate spine. Then as that did not seem to attract her I told her of the Indian babies safely bound to a straight board and hung in the trees. That desperate cruelty, as it seemed to her, roused her to speech, which it is difficult to do. With great indignation she told me there was no need for her to be so cruel to her baby as she had a boy to mind it. The boy may be four, but I do not think he is quite that. I am going to make a nice little box, with a handle and a little pad in it for a mattress, to carry the baby in.
I enjoyed every moment of this beautiful day drinking in God's glorious handiwork of air and sky—everywhere masses of goldenrod and banks of feathery white fennel.
October 10.
This morning Miss Pandora brought me a present of a dozen splendid apples! I was greatly touched by it—such a great present here, where we see no fruit but pears. It was Miss Melpomene's birthday and I was busy fixing up a little offering for her, a summer duck nicely roasted (for Chloe's cooking a duck doubles its value) surrounded by tomatoes from my pot plant, which are supposed to be very superior in flavor. I sent a note asking Miss Melpomene to go with me to Cherokee this afternoon prepared to pick peas.
She seemed startled but accepted with pleasure, and when I explained that she was to keep all she picked she was charmed, as hers have failed entirely. I drove to the field and left her there, having lent her my pea picking apron. It is made of light blue denim, quite long and turned up like a sewing apron only much larger, for it can hold nearly a bushel of peas.
I drove to the barn-yard to leave the horse and buckboard and return to help her pick, but I found ten hands waiting with huge bundles of peas. Bonaparte said with great impatience, "Dem do' want no money, dem want peas," so I said at once, "I don't blame them, let them have the peas."
But I had to stop and make the necessary calculations for each to get one-third of what she had picked. It was quite a business, for in all they had picked 1197 pounds of peas, some picking 150 pounds, others only fifty. They are selling for 10 cents a quart now, so naturally the pickers prefer taking a portion of the peas to money.