LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
| PAGE | |
| "An evening party" | [Frontispiece] |
| "Carpenters always at work for the comfort of the plantation" | [2] |
| "Accompanied by one of these smiling 'indispensables'" | [4] |
| "I use to watch for de carriage" | [10] |
| "I don't want to be free no mo'" | [12] |
| "She always returned in a cart" | [18] |
| "Reading and repeating verses to him" | [26] |
| "My grandmother would show us the step of the minuet" | [32] |
| "There were old gentlemen visitors" | [34] |
| "Now, Marster, you done forgot all 'bout dat" | [36] |
| "Three women would clean up one chamber" | [42] |
| "Lunch by some cool, shady spring" | [66] |
| "His mission on earth seemed to be keeping the brightest silver urns" | [78] |
| "How dey does grow!" | [86] |
| "Where is my mutton?" | [98] |
| "Aunt Fanny 'spersed dat crowd'" | [160] |
A GIRL'S LIFE IN VIRGINIA
BEFORE THE WAR
CHAPTER I.
That my birthplace should have been a Virginia plantation, my lot in life cast on a Virginia plantation, my ancestors, for nine generations, owners of Virginia plantations, remain facts mysterious and inexplicable but to Him who determined the bounds of our habitations, and said: "Be still, and know that I am God."
Confined exclusively to a Virginia plantation during my earliest childhood, I believed the world one vast plantation bounded by negro quarters. Rows of white cabins with gardens attached; negro men in the fields; negro women sewing, knitting, spinning, weaving, housekeeping in the cabins; with negro children dancing, romping, singing, jumping, playing around the doors,—these formed the only pictures familiar to my childhood.