A Woman Rice Planter

by Elizabeth W. Allston Pringle

That happened several years in succession. I never have had a field hand-whipped turn out over twenty bushels to the acre, and I have seldom had one threshed in the mill until these last very bad years turn out under thirty.

All of this made me determine to try planting mill-threshed rice this year. I planted a small portion in a bowl of water on cotton, which is the approved way of trying seed, and nearly every single seed germinated and shot up a fine healthy leaf. So I felt no hesitation about it; and I began with my wages field, putting half a bushel more to the acre in case there should be some grains cracked in the mill. I went over early to the field and sat on the bank all day, while Bonaparte and Abram followed the sowers.

The women are very graceful as they sow the rice with a waving movement of the hands, at the same time bending low so that the wind may not scatter the grain; and a good sower gets it all straight in the furrow. Their skirts are tied up around their hips in a very picturesque style, and as they walk they swing in a wonderful way. This peculiar arrangement allows room for one or two narrow sacks (under the skirt), which can hold a peck of rice, and some of the sowers, if weighed on the homeward trip, would be found to have gained many pounds. They are all very gentle and considerate in their manner to-day, for a great sorrow has fallen on the family. Their tender, sympathetic manner is more to me than many bushels of rice, and I turn my back when they are dipping it out.

I have offered hand-whipped rice for sale at $1.30 a bushel, and mill-threshed at $1 per bushel, and have sold 159 bushels of the former and 225 bushels of the latter, which has been a great help. We have made a fine start on the upland crop, and the corn looks very well. The small acreage planted in cotton also looks well, and I hope it will be worked properly while I am gone.

May 9.

Left Cherokee for a month's absence, and drove to Gregory to take the through train to Washington, where I arrived the next morning in time for breakfast. I have a duty which calls me away. It was a pity to have to leave now, for the people had just become roused to an interest in preparing the land for their crop, and it is the first propitious season we have had for three years with no spring freshet, and I hope to get about 100 acres planted at Cherokee. I feel better satisfied to leave since Jim has returned to work with me and will take entire charge of the upland crop. His health suffered in the confinement of the town work. He was in bed a good deal of the time, and, what with lost time and doctor's bills, his wife found they were worse off instead of better, and finally, after nine months, she begged him to come and ask me to take him back, which I gladly did, and he has gone to work with enthusiasm.

While away, I visited Washington, Mount Vernon, Baltimore, and New York, and was much impressed by the immense strides made in every way since my last visit. The increase of wealth and luxury, the fact that simplicity of life is becoming impossible even to those who would prefer it, the rush and the hurry which one cannot avoid, the tyranny of fashion which no one seems able to shake off—all of these things amazed me. My good black Chloe once surprised me by saying: "You know, Miss Patience, ef yu aint een de fashi'n yu may's well be dead!" But Chloe follows at such a very respectful distance that the "fashi'n" so vital to her at this moment is a watered form of what was worn in New York four years ago. Still, I recognize in it the same note which I find dominant wherever I go and which is to me incomprehensible—it doesn't seem to me very self-respecting to feel obliged to follow some one else's taste so absolutely. One's eye naturally turns toward the changes of mode which are pretty, but to feel bound to follow simply because fashion decrees, I do not understand.

I saw many things that interested me greatly. One evening I was walking back to the St. Denis about 10:30 when my escort said: "That scarcely seems possible at this season." "What?" I asked. He pointed to a closely pressed row of men in a single file, on the edge of the pavement, one immediately behind the other in perfect order: decently dressed, respectable-looking men. It had a strange look to me, and I asked the meaning of it. "That's the Fleischman line." This conveyed nothing to me. "It is a great bakery here, which for years has distributed every night at twelve all the bread left over from the day's bake, one loaf to each man. I know that in winter the line extends many blocks, but at this season I am surprised to see such a line at this hour; it will be twice as long by midnight." My heart just stood still as I looked at it.

That so many men, looking so respectable, could need a loaf of bread, and wait silently, patiently for hours together seemed impossible to me. Where I live there is no hunger, no want; life is so easy, food so plentiful. A few hours' work daily feeds a man and his family.

One day Jim was driving to town to spend Sunday with his family, and the next day he told me that he had met an old woman on the road going from one plantation to another. She seemed half blind and looked so miserable that he stopped and asked her where she was going, and offered to take her there in the wagon, as he had to pass right by. He helped her in and she told him she was very hungry—had eaten nothing since the day before.