A Woman Rice Planter

by Elizabeth W. Allston Pringle

I took out a little pinkish tight wad and opening it carefully there, folded up in the middle, I found a little green leaf. Of course these would injure the quality of the cotton, yet it was impossible to have them kept separate in the picking, so I pick them out when it is spread out in the sun.

While I was doing this Jim came to get orders and I had him pick a while. I commented on Goliah's delight and excitement over a death and funeral. He had been so sick and miserable yesterday that he went home about 4 o'clock, but being sent to tell Chloe the news he came to the yard and then took her out to the street and escorted her back here again about half past ten. He was eager to go to the "settin' up," six miles up the road, but could find no one willing to walk up there with him. I said:—

"I do not think there is anything in which the races differ more entirely than in their attitude to death. No white child wishes to have anything to do with death; they fly from the signs and tokens of it, whereas the children of the African race seem to be attracted by it."

Jim answered: "What you say must be true, Miss Pennington, for nothin' gives me more pleasure than to handle the dead. I just delights in it an' I have great luck in it, too; scarcely a person dies but what I have the privilege of jumping down in the grave and receiving the body an' makin' it comfortable in there."

I was quite startled. He went on:—

"W'en I cum frum town an' fin' that they'd buried Georgie without my bein' there to handle her I was that disappointed I couldn't scarcely stand it."

He had gone to town before Georgie died one afternoon and she was buried the next before he came back. It is curious to see racial peculiarities continue from generation to generation. There is no repulsion to or fear of death among negroes as long as the clay is visible, but as soon as the funeral is over and the grave is left, then terror begins. Jim himself does not like to walk down the front avenue alone at night, because it is so near the beautiful spot where those of his race who have died here, have been buried for over a hundred years. And still they come. It does not matter if they have died elsewhere if they are prosperous, and even if it is a mighty effort they beg to be brought "home" and laid by their people. As my father owned 600 when the war ended, it makes a number of funerals, for all the descendants of those want to be laid here. There is something very touching about it to me.

I am very anxious to put a wire fence around the spot. I think it must be nearly two acres, and I do not like the animals to have the run of it. Two or three years ago I told the people that if each family would contribute something toward the wire I would put up the fence, giving the cedar posts, and the expense of putting it up. A number brought a quarter each, so that I have $4 toward the wire. Things have been so with me for several years that I cannot make up the sum lacking, so the fence must wait a while longer.

September 15.

My poor, dear Chloe was so excited after old Mose's funeral that she came last night and stood talking until eleven. I was frantic to finish a horrible French play I was reading—it is in five acts, and I am so tired of its wickedness, and I cannot finish it. When I saw she had started on a regular talk I got my sewing and did a lot of work—put the whole frill I have scalloped on to the skirt.