"Well—get out your chains and grappling hooks, Moses, and save all you can. It will do to feed the chickens."
"Why, Uncle!" I exclaimed, "how calmly you take it."
"Certainly," said he; "because I've lost my crop is that any reason I should lose my temper? Here, Pizarro, have our horses saddled. We'll go down to the river and encourage Moses to resurrect his wheat." (Pizarro was John's son. John had studied with the boys of the family, and knew some history and Latin. One of the women bore the classic name of "Lethe"; others were "Chloe" and "Daphne"; another name, frequently repeated, was "Dicey"—a survival, according to Mr. Andrew Lang, of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, which was found among the Indians and the Virginia negroes of colonial times. Orpheus seems to have perished from their traditions, but Dicey is still a favorite name. The descendants of Lethe and Pizarro still live at the Oaks. A late achievement shows their progress under new conditions, the baptismal records having been enriched with "Hazel-Kirke-Florida-Bell-Armazinda-Hodge," more imposing if less suggestive than the "Homicide" and "Neuralgia" of a neighboring county.)
This precise type of a Virginia plantation will never appear again, I imagine. I wish I could describe a plantation wedding as I saw it that summer. But a funeral of one of the old servants was peculiarly interesting to me. "Aunt Matilda" had been much loved, and when she found herself dying, she had requested that the mistress and little children should attend her funeral. "I ain' been much to church," she urged, "I couldn't leave my babies. I ain' had dat shoutin' an' hollerin' religion, but I gwine to heaven jes' de same"—a fact of which nobody who knew Aunt Matilda could have the smallest doubt.
We had a long, warm walk behind hundreds of negroes, following the rude coffin in slow procession through the woods, singing antiphonally as they went one of those strange, weird hymns not to be caught by any Anglo-Saxon voice.
It was a beautiful and touching scene, and at the grave I longed for an artist (we had no kodaks then) to perpetuate the picture. The level rays of the sun were filtered through the green leaves of the forest, and fell gently on the dusky, pathetic faces, and on the simple coffin surrounded by orphan children and relatives, very dignified and quiet in their grief.
The spiritual patriarch of the plantation presided. Old Uncle Abel said:—
"I ain' gwine keep you all long. 'Tain' no use. We can't do nothin' for Sis' Tildy. All is done fer her, an' she done preach her own fune'al sermon. Her name was on dis church book here, but dat warn' nothin', 'dout 'twas on de Lamb book too!
"Now whiles dey fillin' up her grave I'd like you all to sing a hymn Sis' Tildy uster love, but you all know I bline in one eye, an' de sweat done got in de other; so's I can't see to line it out, an' I dunno as any o' you all ken do it"—and the first thing I knew, the old man had passed his well-worn book to me, and there I stood, at the foot of the grave, "lining out":—
"Asleep in Jesus, blessed sleep