I made a visit to hers a few days after our separation, and came away with my heart in my mouth at the sight of some of the familiar objects of Mammy's room, and such of our own as she had fallen heir to, in strange places and appositions. I also felt that Mammy's room had a more homelike aspect than my own.
There was no doubt that Mammy enjoyed her new conditions and surroundings. She had been provided with a paper signed by some of us, stating that it was with our permission that she lived to herself. This secured her free movement at all times—the privilege of very few of her race not legally manumitted.
Her visits to me were quite frequent, and she never failed to find something that needed putting to rights, and putting it so immediately, with fierce comments on the worthlessness of all “high-lands,” which was negroce for hirelings—a class held in contempt by the servants owned in families.
I think that Mammy must have discovered the fact that my estate was somewhat deteriorated.
I was painfully conscious of this myself, and saw no prospect of its amelioration. The little cash that had come to me was quite dissipated, and my meagre salary was insufficient to satisfy my artificial wants—the only ones that a young man cannot dispense with and be happy.
In spite of the opinion prevailing in those days, that when a young man embraced the career of an artist it was a farewell to all hope of a sober and prosperous career, my father had been willing for me to follow my manifest bent, and I was to sacrifice a university career as the alternative. But the last enemy stepped between me and my hopes, and there was nothing for it but to go to work.
I had an ardent admirer in Mammy, who, in her innocence of a proper standard, frequently compared my productions to a “music back” or a tobacco label. That was before the days of chromos.
Mammy turned up Sunday mornings to look after my buttons. Those were days of fond reminiscence and poignant regret on my part.
“Seems to me hit's time for you to be getting some new shirts, Mahs William,” she said, one Sunday morning. Mammy touched me sorely there. A crisis was certainly impending in my lingerie.
“Oh, I reckon not. You must have got hold of a bad one, Mammy.”