Samantha on the Race Problem

by Marietta Holley

Old Mammy and Cato the boy took care of the garden, with an occasional day’s work hired, when horses wuz required.

The fruit and vegetables Cato carried to a neighborin’ plantation, where they wuz carried away to market with the farmer’s own big loads.

And there Genieve had lived, and lived still, a goin’ out deeply respected, and at seventy-five cents to a dollar a day.

I felt dretfully interested in her from the very first; and though it is hitchin’ several wagons before the horses’ heads, I may as well tell sunthin’ of her mother’s history now as to keep it along till bimeby. As long as it has got to be told I may as well tell it now as any time, as fur as I know.

Maggie told it to me, and it wuz told to her by a woman that knew what she wuz a sayin’.

Genieve’s mother wuz a very beautiful quadroon who had been brought up well by an indulgent and good-natured mistress, and a religious one too. There are as good wimmen in the South as in the North, and men too. She had educated Madeline and made a sort of a companion of her. She wuz rich, she could do as she wuz a mind to; and bein’ a widder, she had no one to say to her “Why do ye do so?”

So she had brought up Madeline as a sort of a pet, and thought her eyes of her.

Wall, this mistress had some rich and high-born French relatives, and one of ’em—a young man—come over here on a visit, and fell in love the first thing with Madeline, the beautiful quadroon companion of his aunt.

And she loved him so well that in the end her love wuz stronger than the principles of religion that the old lady had instilled into her, for she ran away with this Monseur De Chasseny, and, forgettin’ its wickedness, they lived an ideally happy life for years in a shootin’ lodge of hisen in the heart of a fragrant pine forest in South Carolina. They lived this happy life till his father found him, and by means of family pride, and ambition, and the love of keepin’ his own word and his father’s pledges, he got him to leave his idyllic life and go back to the duties of his rank and his family in the old country.