Undoubtedly the words suggested to her very different ideas from what they did to us; for she obstinately refused to have them exchanged for good English. But when the enlightened, wise, liberal, and refined for generations have found edification and spiritual profit from a service chanted in an unknown tongue, who shall say that the poor negroes of our plantation did not derive real spiritual benefit from their night services? It was at least an aspiration, a reaching and longing for something above animal and physical good, a recognition of God and immortality, and a future beyond this earth, vague and indefinite though it were.
As to the women, they were all of the class born and bred as field-hands. They were many of them as strong as men, could plough and chop and cleave with the best, and were held to be among the best field-laborers; but, in all household affairs, they were as rough and unskilled as might be expected. To mix meal, water, and salt into a hoe-cake, and to fry salt pork or ham or chicken, was the extent of their knowledge of cooking; and as to sewing, it is a fortunate thing that the mild climate requires very slight covering. All of them practised, rudely, cutting, fitting, and making of garments to cover their children; but we could see how hard was their task, after working all day in the field, to come home and get the meals, and then, after that, have the family sewing to do. In our view, woman never was made to do the work which supports the family; and, if she do it, the family suffers more for want of the mother's vitality expended in work than it gains in the wages she receives. Some of the brightest and most intelligent negro men begin to see this, and to remove their wives from field-labor; but on the plantation, as we saw it, the absence of the mother all day from home was the destruction of any home-life or improvement.
Yet, with all this, the poor things, many of them, showed a most affecting eagerness to be taught to read and write. We carried down and distributed a stock of spelling-books among them, which they eagerly accepted, and treasured with a sort of superstitious veneration; and Sundays, and evenings after work, certain of them would appear with them in hand, and earnestly beg to be taught. Alas! we never felt so truly what the loss and wrong is of being deprived of early education as when we saw how hard, how almost hopeless, is the task of acquisition in mature life. When we saw the sweat start upon these black faces, as our pupils puzzled and blundered over the strange cabalistic forms of the letters, we felt a discouraged pity. What a dreadful piece of work the reading of the English language is! Which of us would not be discouraged beginning the alphabet at forty?
After we left, the same scholars were wont to surround one of the remaining ladies. Sometimes the evening would be so hot and oppressive, she would beg to be excused. "O misse, but two of us will fan you all the time!" And "misse" could not but yield to the plea.
One of the most dreaded characters on the place was the dairy-woman and cook Minnah. She had been a field-hand in North Carolina, and worked at cutting down trees, grubbing land, and mauling rails. She was a tall, lank, powerfully-built woman, with a pair of arms like windmill-sails, and a tongue that never hesitated to speak her mind to high or low. Democracy never assumes a more rampant form than in some of these old negresses, who would say their screed to the king on his throne, if they died for it the next minute. Accordingly, Minnah's back was all marked and scored with the tyrant's answers to free speech. Her old master was accustomed to reply to her unpleasant observations by stretching her over a log, staking down her hands and feet, and flaying her alive, as a most convincing style of argument. For all that, Minnah was neither broken nor humbled: she still asserted her rights as a human being to talk to any other human being as seemed to her good and proper; and many an amusing specimen of this she gave us. Minnah had learned to do up gentlemen's shirts passably, to iron and to cook after a certain fashion, to make butter, and do some other household tasks: and so, before the wives of the gentlemen arrived on the place, she had been selected as a sort of general housekeeper and manager in doors; and, as we arrived on the ground first, we found Minnah in full command,—the only female presence in the house.
It was at the close of a day in May, corresponding to our August, that Mrs. F—— and baby and myself, with sundry bales of furniture and household stuff, arrived at the place. We dropped down in a lazy little sail-boat which had lain half the day becalmed, with the blue, hazy shores on either side melting into indefinite distance, and cast anchor far out in the stream; and had to be rowed in a smaller boat to the long wharf that stretched far out into the waters. Thence, in the thickening twilight, we ascended, passed through the belt of forest-trees that overhung the shore, and crossed the wide fields of fine white sand devoted to the raising of cotton. The planter's house was a one-story cottage, far in the distance, rising up under the shelter of a lofty tuft of Spanish oaks.
Never shall we forget the impression of weird and almost ludicrous dreariness which took possession of us as Mrs. F—— and myself sat down in the wide veranda of the one-story cottage to wait for the gentlemen, who had gone down to assist in landing our trunks and furniture. The black laborers were coming up from the field; and, as one and another passed by, they seemed blacker, stranger, and more dismal, than any thing we had ever seen.
The women wore men's hats and boots, and had the gait and stride of men; but now and then an old hooped petticoat, or some cast-off, thin, bedraggled garment that had once been fine, told the tale of sex, and had a wofully funny effect.
As we sat waiting, Minnah loomed up upon us in the twilight veranda like a gaunt Libyan sibyl, walking round and round, surveying us with apparent curiosity, and responding to all our inquiries as to who and what she was by a peculiarly uncanny chuckle. It appeared to amuse her extremely that Mr. F—— had gone off and left the pantry locked up, so that she could not get us any supper; we being faint and almost famished with our day's sail. The sight of a white baby dressed in delicate white robes, with lace and embroidery, also appeared greatly to excite her; and she stalked round and round with a curious simmer of giggle, appearing and disappearing at uncertain intervals, like a black sprite, during the mortal hour and a half that it cost our friends to land the goods from the vessel.
After a while, some supper was got for us in a wide, desolate apartment, fitted up with a small cooking-stove in the corner.