I found relief from the depression produced by the tragic reminiscences confided to me by going out into the sunlight on the grass-carpeted lawn and walking under the pink and white canopy of the blossoming althea bushes, or Rose of Sharon, as the flowering plant was sometimes called. The negroes had named the althea the "toothbrush tree" because they broke twigs from it and chewed the ends of the tough fiber into brushes softer than the finest hair brush and used them for cleaning their teeth. "Miss Rose Sharon she first started it," they said. "She was a fairy and lived in the tree and the pink and white blossoms are the smile of her pretty face." I thought the fairy magic in the "tooth-brush tree" was what kept the teeth of the negroes so dazzlingly white, and we children always made our toothbrushes of the same material, hoping to achieve a like result.
On the plantation were some "Story Trees," or "Ghost Trees," as the negroes called them. On their trunks were patches of white and gray moss, like fragments of thin veils. Each of the splotches bore a warning or a legend brought by the spirits and written there. The trees were centuries old and held the ancient Bible stories recorded before the alphabet was invented, when the art of reading was among the undiscovered things, and not even the earliest picture-writing had been evolved. It was only the most important messages that the Lord would permit to be confided to the old trees. Some of the spirit records had broken lines and the servants said that the angel's wing was broken as he brought the message down. There was a deep and fearsome scar on one of the "ghost trees" which indicated a tragedy, past or to come, and I used to gaze upon it with awesome wonder, trying to read its dread meaning.
A few years later a great tragedy came and the blackness of it shrouded our whole nation, but whether that was what the old tree prophecy meant I know not.
IV MY SOLDIER
Everyone has a point of beginning—a period back of which life, to present consciousness, was not. For me this point stands out vividly in memory.
I was staying with my grandmother, for since she took me home in the "settin'-aig-basket," she had lovingly asserted her claim. My time was divided between the two homes, hers and my father's. My tall handsome father and my beautiful little mother sat on the front veranda, my brother Thomas playing near them on the grass. It was in cherry time and I saw "Uncle Charles" coming up the slope carrying a forked stick on which hung a great cluster of black-heart cherries edged with bright red ones that he had gathered for them to take home.
Suddenly my attention was diverted from the cherries to a horse pounding down the lane and stopping at the gate, where a barefoot boy tumbled off. He had ridden bareback, with plow-hames for a bridle, as if the horse had been hastily taken from the field.
"Come quick as you can, please, ma'am!" cried the boy. "Mrs. Pitt is dying!"