This was certainly not the gratitude which La Rochefoucauld dubbed "a keen sense of favors to come." The other reads:—
In Memory
of
My Servant Thomas,
Carpenter.
Honest and True
He died as for 40 years
He had lived
My Faithful Friend
1850
It is remarkable that my father did not put his name, R. F. W. Allston, to show who had so honored and remembered his faithful slaves; in another generation no one will know. He was Governor of South Carolina in 1857-1858.
Good little Estelle died yesterday and is to be buried this afternoon, and it was looking to her funeral that I walked through the beautiful spot to-day, and finding so many fallen trees I called Frank to come with his axe and clear it out a little. I can ill afford to pay for the day's work, but cannot bear to have it look so wild and unkept.
April 4.
A perfect day. Last night was so cold that the watermelons, which were up and growing nicely in the little boxes ready to be set out, were nipped.
Chloe returned last evening from Estelle's funeral in a state of exaltation. The preacher had described her death, and it was glorious. He repeated the words she had said: "Yes, I'm goin', don't fret. I'm all paid up fur ebryt'ing. I got um here, right by me, a bag o' pure gold on one side o' me—en Jesus Christ on de oder—en now I'm gwine to de weddin' supper."
Then she asked him to read a certain chapter and at the end of each verse she said: "Dat's it, tenk yu, sah," and when the reading was ended she went to sleep.
Estelle had been our maid for five years and only left us to be married—a good match according to their ideas. She had a new baby every year and worked very hard. She grew blacker and thinner, until early this spring she took to bed. Though scarcely thirty I think, she leaves five living children and three lie in the graveyard beside her.
I never could get her to do anything in the house after her marriage, though it would have been much easier for her to take the lighter housework and with the money hire some one to do the heavier field work. But that is not the proper thing among the darkies of to-day.