A Woman Rice Planter

by Elizabeth W. Allston Pringle

"Oh," I said, "Jim, did you give her something to eat?"

"I didn't have nothing to eat with me, ma'am, but the sticks of candy you giv me to take to my chillun; but I giv her them, en you never see any one so please'." Then he went on to say:—

"It seems to me sence I ken remember this is the first person I ever seen real hungry."

"You mean you have never met a hungry person on the road before?"

"I never met none on the road nor never seen none nowhere that was perishin' with hunger."

I was scarcely surprised, for my mother always at Christmas told her man servant to find out the poor and those needing food that she might supply it. The old man always reported that there was no one he could find in need of food, but plenty to whom a present of tea and coffee would be most acceptable, and to these the packages of sugar, coffee, tea, and tobacco always went.

The next thing I wish to mention is my visit to the Agricultural Department in Washington. I went in search of information as to the planting of alfalfa, and the use of the impregnated soil, which is said almost to insure success. That is the crop to which I look with much hope for our uplands, and I have much at heart to take in a beautifully drained area of thirty acres which has been pastured for some years and plant it eventually all in alfalfa. At first I could not get more than ten acres in fine enough condition, I suppose; but all that I can plant this year I wish to. I have already bought the wire to enclose it, which is a heavy outlay, and had the cedar posts got out, so that it will not cost much to get the fence put up; but I have no proper disk harrows and cultivators to put the soil in the best condition, and the outlay is too heavy to venture on buying them, so I will do the best I can with my old-fashioned implements and plant a heavy crop of cow-peas on the land as a preparation for the alfalfa, which I will not plant till September.

It was a great pleasure and satisfaction to find men of intelligence and education whose whole time is devoted to the effort to promote the productiveness of soil everywhere, and to find them willing, I may say eager, to assist me in every way. All the information was given in a brief and yet courteous way that was a great boon to me, and the reading matter furnished me by them on the subject will make it plain sailing, if only I succeed in getting good seed; and the impregnated soil, I believe, will prove a blessing to this section and solve many problems.

On my return after a very hot journey I reached Gregory at 10 o'clock at night and drove to a pineland two miles away, where I was most hospitably received and spent a delightfully cool night. The heat in Washington and New York had been extraordinary for the season. The next morning I attended to my business in Gregory and started on my homeward drive of twenty miles about 10 o'clock. I drove first to Casa Bianca, where the June rice wages field of twenty-six acres was being planted. I found Marcus and the hands in fine spirits. The April rice was very fine, they said, especially the River Wragg, though Marcus told me it was suffering greatly from the need of hoeing, but he could not stop the preparation of the land for the June planting to hoe it out. This trouble is due to the moving of so many of the young people last winter to town. They were all good hoe hands and there is no one to take their place. The men now think it beneath them to handle a hoe; that they consider a purely feminine implement; the plough alone is man's tool.

I stayed at Casa Bianca until 3 and then drove to Cherokee, where everything had a very different aspect. When I drove into the barnyard, after the usual exchange of politeness with Bonaparte as to the health of each member of the family, I asked him how the rice crop looked. He laughed in a scornful way and said: "W'y, ma'am, I may's well say der ain't none." "No crop, Bonaparte; what do you mean?" He continued to smile in his superior way, and the hands standing round chimed in: "Yu' right, Uncle Bonaparte, you may's well say dey's none, we fiel' ain' got none tall een um, 'tis dat mill trash rice; you kin see de rice dead een de row wid de long sprout on um, all dead." I answered quickly, "If the seed is dead with a long sprout on it, that proves conclusively that the seed was not to blame; if the seed had been defective, it would not have sprouted. There was a good stand in Varunreen; before I left, the sprout water had been drawn." "Well, ma'am, dey ain't nun dey now to speak of." "How is the tide now?" "Most high water now, ma'am." "Get my boat out at once and I will go over and see for myself."