A Woman Rice Planter

by Elizabeth W. Allston Pringle

Nat came up from Casa Bianca to tell me my fine yearling steer Knox was dead. He was perfectly well apparently when Jim went down there last week. It always is a trial to talk to a negro in such cases. I asked of course what ailed the steer. Nat scratched his head violently and answered:—

"Miss, 'e time cum, I t'ink. W'en we time cum we 'bleeged to go. De black steer time cum en I cudn't keep um; en beside dat 'e had de hollow tail."

Of course I retreated from the effort to find out anything, but I told him he must bring the rest of the cattle up here. The pasture being very fine down there, I leave the cows there in summer, but as soon as the corn-fields are open here I bring them back where I can look after them during the winter.

Cherokee, November 12.

Great activity prevails in this household; I am moved to brush up my dear old home a little, so I have bought some kalsomine, and every minute which can be spared from getting in the hay Jim is kalsomining. He has finished the breakfast room, which was a disgrace, and then he finished the upstairs hall, and is now engaged on the lower hall.

The dear departed peacock, whose mate was eaten up by a fox while sitting on a nest of beautiful eggs, lived three years in a state of single misery, during which time he broke every pane of glass in the windows he could reach. It was so pathetic that I could not give way to wrath and have him beaten away. He was looking for that lovely mate, with her graceful long neck and dainty small head, and seemed to think she was imprisoned in the house, for he roamed round and round it, first on one shed and then on another, and when, peering in through the window glass, he caught sight of his own iridescent form, he would plunge forward in an ecstasy of joy, break the glass, cut his poor, proud head and hastily fly away, only to begin the search again as soon as his wounds were healed. In this way the windows were broken one by one, and the dirt daubers (a very busy flying thing that looks exactly like a wasp, but does not sting) came in and made their wonderful clay houses in the halls, so that it looked like some old, deserted, haunted place.

It was impossible to get all the glass put back. The hall window has a pointed arched top like a church window, and that shape of glass I could not get, so I just felt helpless and hopeless while the little workers in clay triumphed over me. When, however, the hall window was covered with fine bronze wire on the outside from top to bottom these little wonders of industry and perseverance were foiled.

It was funny to watch them when they first reached the window loaded down with red clay and flew up against the wire. They could not believe that that pygmy man whom they had got the better of for years had really foiled them at last. For days and weeks they continued the attack and many, many perished in their determined efforts to squeeze through openings too small for them.

But to return to the peacock and his search for his lost love. He reminded me of that tragic scene in Gluck's "Orpheus and Eurydice" when he dares to enter the vast terrible kingdom of the dead in his search for his beloved—the eager, pathetic gaze into the lifeless face of each veiled form, the joy of imagined recognition, only to fade into disappointment and horror as returning life shows the mistaken identity. The peacock grew thinner and thinner. Occasionally he would go into the busy poultry yard and spread out his beautiful fan and salaam to the white Leghorn hens and win their cackling admiration, but those exhibitions became rarer each year, and finally he disappeared. I am quite sure he sought the solitude of the forest to die.

I miss him all the time in spite of his mischievous activity, for he was a part of the place. I tried very hard to get a mate for him, but never found one. In the years gone by peafowl were very common through this country. We used to call it our episcopal dish, for every year when the Bishop of the diocese stayed with us on his visit to the parish, mamma had a roast peacock as part of the dinner. The breast is very large, like that of a partridge, and of a very delicate game flavor.