XII
ELECTION DAY AND A DEMOCRATIC BARBECUE
The time of the singing of birds and the departure of winter came suddenly that year. Hyacinths were aglow in my mother’s front yard early in February, and the orchards were aflame with “the fiery blossoms of the peach.” The earth awoke from sleep with a bound, and human creatures thrilled, as at the presage of great events.
It was the year of the presidential election and a campaign of extraordinary importance. My father talked to me of what invested it with this importance as we walked together down the street one morning when the smell of open flowers and budding foliage was sweet in our nostrils.
A Democratic barbecue was to be held in a field on the outskirts of the village just beyond “Jordan’s Creek.” The stream took its name from the man whose plantation bounded it on the west. The widening and deepening into a pool at the foot of his garden made it memorable in the Baptist Church.
I do not believe there was a negro communicant in any other denomination throughout the length of the county. And their favorite baptizing-place was “Jordan’s Creek.” I never knew why, until my mother’s maid—a bright mulatto, with a smart cross of Indian blood in her veins—“got through,” after mighty strivings on her part, and on the part of the faithful of her own class and complexion, and confided to me her complacency in the thought that she was now safe for time and eternity.
“For, you see, John the Babtis’, he babtized in the River Jerdan, and Brother Watkins, he babtized me in the Creek Jerdan. I s’pose they must be some kin to one another?”
My father laughed and then sighed over the story, when I told it as we set out on our walk. The religious beliefs and superstitions of the colored servants were respected by their owners to a degree those who know little of the system as it prevailed at that time, find it hard to believe. From babyhood we were taught never to speak disrespectfully of the Baptists, or of the vagaries that passed with the negroes for revealed truth. They had a right to their creeds as truly as we had to ours.
This younger generation is also incredulous with respect to another fact connected with our domestic relations. Children were trained in respectful speech to elderly servants—indeed, to all who were grown men and women. My mother made me apologize once to this same maid—Mary Anne by name—for telling her to “Hush her mouth!” the old Virginian form of “Hold your tongue!”
The blesséd woman explained the cause of her reproof when the maid was out of hearing: