Just before the train started, little Jamie begged to be held up to the car window to give me a good-by kiss. Poor little fellow! his eyes streamed with tears, and not even the promise of a pound of candy could console him.
I was not going to Florida, where fashionable invalids spend their winters, but to the home of an old friend of mine on an Alabama plantation. How glad I was to find that she too had a little boy! He was not much like the nephews I had left behind, but I soon found him to be a good-hearted, brave little lad.
His mamma and I were sitting one rainy morning with our work before a great wood fire, when Frankie and his bosom companion, Abe, a young darky, came in with an armful of long dry corn stalks, a handful of chicken feathers, and two kitchen knives.
"Now, Frankie, you are going to make a mess, so get some papers and put them down on the floor," said Frankie's mamma. Abe ran to get the papers, and very soon the two boys were down on their knees, peeling the stalks.
I noticed that the stalks were old and brittle, and that the boys preserved the hull. After watching them for some minutes, I began to make inquiries as to what the stalks were for.
"Dese is fur cattle," said Abe, grinning.
I then asked how they made cattle. Frankie did not seem communicative, so Abe again answered my question.
"Wa'al, we jest cuts 'em. If yer waits a minute I'll show yer."
He cut off a piece of the peeled stalk about four inches long, then split the hull into four pieces about a quarter of an inch wide and two inches long. He stuck two of these pieces near one end of the stalk for hind-legs, and the two others at a quarter of an inch from the other end for front ones. He then cut a piece of the stalk about an inch long for the head, a niche for the mouth, two pins for eyes, and narrow bits of hull for horns; another little strip of hull was stuck first into the head and then into the body to form the neck, a chicken feather put in for the tail, and the job was finished.
"Now, den," said Abe, triumphantly, holding it up, "don't yer see dat's a cow?"