A Woman Rice Planter

by Elizabeth W. Allston Pringle

"Up kum Maum Mary wid de big cake een de wheelbarrer."

Cherokee, March 24.

I have had the great pleasure of a short visit from my friend M. T. She had only a few days of rest from her work in the East Side Settlement House, and to my refreshment and delight she came to me. I love to hear of all the wonderful work done there.

On Thursday I had a most surprising letter from an unknown friend in New York, saying she had become interested in the children of my Sunday-schools and asking if she might send some little Easter presents for them. It was so unexpected and so delightful! I had no thought of being able to get anything for the children.

I wrote her at once, giving a list of the children of the three distinct classes in which I am interested. There is the class of little gentlefolk in the hamlet of Peaceville whom I teach in summer first, then the larger class at St. Peter's Mission Church out in the pine woods. These are the children of the white workers in turpentine. Finally there are the little darkies on the plantation whom I teach in winter, when I can get them. Their own churches, Methodist and Baptist, are very jealous and discourage their coming.

I wrote Miss W. that I sent them all, so that she could choose the class to which she would send presents, and told her how to address the package.

It rained heavily in the afternoon. Gibbie did not come, so I had to milk. I was perfectly delighted, because I got more milk from Winnie than either Gibbie or Dab has been getting. When I was in the mountains one summer I took regular lessons in milking, for the mountain folk milk beautifully, whereas the negroes are generally poor milkers. They never can take all the milk, and if you do not keep the calf to take the balance when the milking is over, the cow will go dry in a very short time. Leave a pint to-day and to-morrow there is that much less, and so on, a pint less every day. The cow is soon only fit to turn out to pasture.

You cannot teach what you do not yourself understand, so I took milking lessons, and as a teacher have been rather a success, but have been generally greatly mortified at the results of my efforts at milking myself. Hence my pride when Chloe said the milk was much more than usual. Chloe cannot milk, she draws the line there, and Bonaparte is still working on the pineland house four miles away, and does not come to the yard at all.

After taking the milk to the house I went to the barn-yard and fed the oxen. Gibbie had taken them out of the plough and turned them out in the rain with nothing to eat and had gone home. I gave them a good supper and then went home, changed my wet clothes, and had my tea and toast and then a delightful evening reading "The Power of Silence." A wonderful book, to my mind.