CHAPTER VIII.
MEMORY AND EXPERIENCE.
“Oh! the blessed hope of freedom how with joy and glad surprise,
For an instant throbs her bosom, for an instant beam her eyes!
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Oh, my people! O my brothers! let us choose the righteous side.”
—Whittier’s Voices of Freedom.
The sun was sinking in the west, when the sound of Aunt Phoebe’s dinner-horn was heard, followed by Uncle Jesse’s cheery response.
Auntie was the model-housekeeper of the neighborhood, (not a high compliment, some readers might think, could they see many of the homes there, where the women spend most of their strength and time at field labor), she having been raised a house-servant, and, by rare chance, blessed with a mistress who gave her personal attention to the comfort of her household.
Auntie’s house boasted glazed windows, two rooms and a loft; and the broad boards of her floors were so clean and white that her kitchen was quite inviting as dining-room and sitting-room also.
Her iron tea-kettle shone and steamed beside a small cherry back-log upon the great hearth, which spread below the wide “Dutch-back” chimney, while the hoe-cakes were “keeping” between a blue-edged earthen plate, and a bright tin pan, upon a hot stone near by, and a kettle of boiling corn, filled the room with its sweet aroma.