“I am glad to see you and your children;” and I extended my hand in genuine cordiality to her who had once been a slave in my mother’s family, and I bade her welcome to her old home. Frances was too demonstrative to be satisfied with simply hand-clasping, and putting her boy on the ground, she threw her arms around me and literally overwhelmed me with kisses. My hands, neck and face were covered with them, and she picked me up and carried me in her arms to the house, her children following in amazed astonishment. She now turned her attention to them, and, after deliberately shaking the wrinkles out of their clothes, she as deliberately introduced them to me. The older of the two she introduced as “King by name,” and the younger as “Lewis by name.”
“You see, Miss Mary, I named my children King and Lewis ’cause my white folks named my brothers King and Lewis.”
The ceremony of introducing her sons to her old white folks being performed to her satisfaction, she again turned her attention to me, and again literally overwhelmed me with caresses.
Entering the house, I asked Frances and her children to come in too.
“Miss Mary, whar’s Miss Polly?”
“Have you not heard, Frances, that ma is dead?”
“Seem to me I has heard somethin’ about it, but some how I didn’t believe it. And my poor Miss Polly is dead! Well, she ain’t dead, but she’s gone to heaven.”
And Frances became quite hysterical in demonstrations of grief.
“And Marse Thomie, what about him, Miss Mary?”
“He was killed by the enemy at Franklin, Tenn., the 30th of November, 1864.”