A Woman Rice Planter

by Elizabeth W. Allston Pringle

Went to church, though there was a gale blowing and the trees looked very dangerous buckling and bending over the road. Ruth behaved well, though she did not like it. When I got back, bringing L. to dinner with me, I found Jim waiting to see me, having ridden up from Gregory on his bicycle. He said he wanted to come back, that his wife was not only willing but anxious for him to come, as she had no pleasure in his life in town, he was so ailing and worked so hard. He begged me to take him. The only thing he wanted to ask was that I would let him spend every Sunday in Gregory, for he sang in the choir in his church and didn't want to give up the music. I told him I would always do so if possible, but that there might be circumstances which would make it impossible to spare him on Sunday.

The smoke-house at Cherokee for meat curing.

He cannot come until he gets some one to take his place, but as he is coming I will put off the meat curing and sausage making until he comes, for my mother taught him the best way of doing all that, and it makes it so much easier than undertaking it with a green hand. Jim is to do almost everything, under our present agreement; but Gibbie is still to milk and to keep the stables clean and cut wood for the house.

December 11.

Lent Bonaparte the ox wagon and team to go to Gregory and lay in his household supplies. Sent a note to Billy P.—and his brother, who had been selling the lightwood for themselves instead of for me, telling them to leave the place with their families at once. Of course I should have taken the money for the wood, but I could not make up my mind to do that without some legal process, and as I could not get any witness to testify against them any legal process was impossible. If I had ordered them to give me one-half the money, quite possibly they might have done it; but they might have refused to do it and I would then have been powerless. I am very careful not to give any order which I cannot have obeyed.

December 12.

Billy and Sol came to beg me to let them stay until January, but I told them I had trusted them and they had betrayed my trust and must go at once. I hate to lose their wives, who are good workers, and their little children, who come to say catechism and sing hymns and have a stick of candy every Sunday afternoon. Sol's wife, Aphrodite, is such a specimen of health and maternal vigor that I delight to see her going to work with her procession of little ones behind her. The men themselves are strong, able-bodied workers, and I shall miss them; but once having begun to depredate upon me, nothing will stop them.

I find now that recently they have been living out of my vegetable garden, and the potato banks have been robbed and there are dark hints as to their guilt in that, too. I told them they must whip their rice out by hand at once so as to pay their rent, and take the rest with them. It is a sad state of things that one is unable to secure redress in any way for depredation, and so the only thing to do when a tenant goes wrong in this way is to send him off, so that unless one winks at evil deeds or condones offences, one will soon be without hands entirely.