Sometimes I'se up, sometimes I'se down,
Sometimes I'se lebel wid de groun;
Oh, git out, Satan
Hallalu!"
And these words sound queer to you as you read them, perhaps, but they did not sound queer when Mammy Delphy was singing them. I don't believe that a song out of heaven could be sweeter than this and other songs like it that dear old Mammy sings,
with her turbaned head bobbing up and down and her foot softly keeping time to the melody. There is a sort of plaintive—what shall I call it?—twist in her voice that makes you choke up about the throat, if you are a boy, and sob right out if you are a girl. And it makes you, somehow, remember, in hearing it, all the sweet, sad little stories that your mother has told you about your little baby sister who died before you were born; or, if you have stood in a darkened room, holding fast to some tender and loving hand, and looked at a face that was dear to you lying upon its coffin pillow, you think of that strange and sad time. And with these thoughts come, as you listen, other thoughts of flying angels and shining crowns, and wide-opened gates of pearl. A sweetness mixed with pain—that is, the feeling which Mammy Delphy's singing brings to you, though you could not describe it, perhaps, if you tried—at least that's the feeling it brings to me.
"I'll take my shoes from off'n my feet,
And walk into de golden street,
Glory, Hallalu!"
sang Mammy. Sam and Jim and Joe came filing in. They had been—well, where hadn't they been! They had been down to the Bayou, which ran a good quarter of a mile back of the place, "fishin for