if you go on telling her such trash she'll forget all she ever did know. I heard you yesterday telling her about the ghosts of the children of Israel that keep on crossing the Red Sea. Now I want you to know, Mary Hutchins, that when those Jews crossed the Red Sea once they were on the other side for good and they don't go on walking through that water as if the Lord had nothing to do but take care of them every time they chose to go wading. There is such a thing as trusting the Lord once too often, and the folks that know Him as well as the children of Israel did aren't going to take risks like that on Him. First thing you know you'll have that child seeing ghosts, and you know well enough that people who see ghosts aren't ever likely to see anything that's worth looking at."
I was often troubled in my mind between a confidence in "Miss Mary," which I wished to preserve unshaken, and the force of Miss Sophia's arguments.
The germ of pathos latent in my undeveloped mind was fostered by the story of Miss Sophia's lost vision, which ran thus:
She was visiting at the home of a friend who owned a parrot of unusual brightness of mind and independence of character. Its mistress had a little wooden whistle like those you may recall having seen rural schoolboys whittle out and use for the production of music somewhat shrill in tone but well adapted to please the taste of the juvenile artist. The lady would whistle to the bird, which would answer her in tones that obviously fell short of its ambition. The mistress had a whistle like her own made for the parrot who, marvelous to relate, acquired a high degree of skill in its use and was proud of the achievement.
Once when Miss Sophia's fiancé called she wished to entertain him with a display of the bird's accomplishments. Putting her friend's whistle to her lips she approached the cage. The parrot, apparently angry with the usurper for daring to assume the character of its mistress, darted its beak through the wires and plucked out one of the interloper's eyes. From overwork or sympathy the other eye lost its sight. The lover's affection failed before the test of a blind sweetheart and he found a more fortunate lady.
This story was told me as a lesson in refraining from meddling with the possessions of other people. In combination with "Meddlesome Matty" in my school reader it led me to extreme care in avoiding too great familiarity with things that did not belong to me.
I was fascinated not only by the tragic story but by the click-clack of Miss Sophia's teeth falling out of place as she told it to me. She had purchased them by the sacrifice of her collection of gold dollars, the gifts of friends through many years. The extravagance and vanity of this purchase furnished another subject of dispute with "Miss Mary," who was a thrifty soul and pious as well.
"Sophia Wilson," she said, "if the Lord had intended you to have teeth all your life wouldn't He have given you a set that would have lasted to your dying day?"
Miss Sophia retorted with spirit:
"If He wanted me to go without teeth because the ones He made turned out badly, why do you suppose He put people into the world that were smart enough to make new ones? Just answer me that!"
The question being wholly unanswerable, the conversation lapsed.
I found relief from the depression produced by the tragic reminiscences confided to me by going out into the sunlight on the grass-carpeted lawn and walking under the pink and white canopy of the blossoming althea bushes, or Rose of Sharon, as the flowering plant was sometimes called. The negroes had named the althea the "toothbrush tree" because they broke twigs from it and chewed the ends of the tough fiber into brushes softer than the finest hair brush and used them for cleaning their teeth. "Miss Rose Sharon she first started it," they said. "She was a fairy and lived in the tree and the pink and white blossoms are the smile of her pretty face." I thought the fairy magic in the "tooth-brush tree" was what kept the teeth of the negroes so dazzlingly white, and we children always made our toothbrushes of the same material, hoping to achieve a like result.
On the plantation were some "Story Trees," or "Ghost Trees," as the negroes called them. On their trunks were patches of white and gray moss, like fragments of thin veils. Each of the splotches bore a warning or a legend brought by the spirits and written there. The trees were centuries old and held the ancient Bible stories recorded before the alphabet was invented, when the art of reading was among the undiscovered things, and not even the earliest picture-writing had been evolved. It was only the most important messages that the Lord would permit to be confided to the old trees. Some of the spirit records had broken lines and the servants said that the angel's wing was broken as he brought the message down. There was a deep and fearsome scar on one of the "ghost trees" which indicated a tragedy, past or to come, and I used to gaze upon it with awesome wonder, trying to read its dread meaning.
A few years later a great tragedy came and the blackness of it shrouded our whole nation, but whether that was what the old tree prophecy meant I know not.
IV MY SOLDIER
Everyone has a point of beginning—a period back of which life, to present consciousness, was not. For me this point stands out vividly in memory.
I was staying with my grandmother, for since she took me home in the "settin'-aig-basket," she had lovingly asserted her claim. My time was divided between the two homes, hers and my father's. My tall handsome father and my beautiful little mother sat on the front veranda, my brother Thomas playing near them on the grass. It was in cherry time and I saw "Uncle Charles" coming up the slope carrying a forked stick on which hung a great cluster of black-heart cherries edged with bright red ones that he had gathered for them to take home.
Suddenly my attention was diverted from the cherries to a horse pounding down the lane and stopping at the gate, where a barefoot boy tumbled off. He had ridden bareback, with plow-hames for a bridle, as if the horse had been hastily taken from the field.
"Come quick as you can, please, ma'am!" cried the boy. "Mrs. Pitt is dying!"
The rockaway was drawn to the door by old Starlight, my grandmother took her seat within, and I watched Pery driving off, following them with my eyes to the end of the lane, where they were lost to view in the highway.
Poor Mrs. Pitt left four children to be apportioned among the members of her church, little Sara falling to my grandmother's care. The next morning my old mammy broke this news to me, ending with:
"Well, I sposin' it's all right, but de li'l gal don't b'long to de quality, en how de Pitts come to membership in de silk-stockin' Chu'ch is beyonst me."
My mammy's idea of the Episcopal Church dated from the days when its members were noted for ornamentation in dress, and to her it was always "de silk-stockin' Chu'ch." The lack of silken qualifications did not lessen her determination to do her duty by the little girl who, in her opinion, was so frail that she was doomed to an early death. In her desire to fulfill her obligations mammy exhorted me to "ack lak a sister-in-law to her, as you can't ack lak a sho' 'nough bloodified sister." She expressed her opinion that it was not for nothing that she had been dreaming about snakes and about wasps building their nests in the beehives and made gloomy predictions of "haunts" and spirits that would prowl around and creep through the keyholes because of this unfortunate child. Warned by my wondering eyes that she was trespassing on forbidden ground, she stopped short, saying:
"G'long, honey, and play wid yo' new French chany set. I done talk to myself 'twel I got a mis'ry in my haid."
The privilege of playing with my dear little set of imported china was granted only when I had been particularly good or some one else particularly indiscreet.
That evening little "Sary Lizbef" came. She was a shy, frail, bow-legged child, with sandy hair, pale blue eyes, and warts on her fingers. I took possession of her, wanting to give her everything I had, happy in my self-abnegation, having a tender feeling for her because of her lack of the vigor possessed by the other children I knew and because there gloomed over me mammy's assertion, "She's 'bleeged to die, anyhow."
One morning Aunt Serena came in to make known to my grandmother