ack room,
in the fluxes and refluxes of buying and selling; not valueless,
however--rely upon a negro-trader for discovering values as
substitutes, as panaceas. She earned her nourishment, and Providence
did not let it kill the little animal before the emancipation of
weaning arrived.

[Illustration: "LITTLE MAMMY."]

How much circumstances evoked, how much instinct responded, belongs to
the secrets which nature seems to intend keeping. As a baby she had
eyes, attention, solely for other babies. One cannot say while she was
still crawling, for she could only crawl years after she should have
been walking, but, before even precocious walking-time, tradition or
the old gray-haired negro janitor relates, she would creep from baby
to baby to play with it, put it to sleep, pat it, rub its stomach (a
negro baby, you know, is all stomach, and generally aching stomach at
that). And before she had a lap, she managed to force one for some
ailing nursling. It was then that they began to call her "little
Mammy." In the transitory population of the "pen" no one stayed long
enough to give her another name; and no one ever stayed short enough
to give her another one.

Her first recollection of herself was that she could not walk--she was
past crawling; she cradled herself along, as she called sitting down
flat, and working herself about with her hands and her one strong
leg. Babbling babies walked all around her,--many walking before they
babbled,--and still she did not walk, imitate them as she might and
did. She would sit and "study" about it, make another trial, fall;
sit and study some more, make another trial, fall again. Negroes, who
believe that they must give a reason for everything even if they have
to invent one, were convinced that it was all this studying upon her
lameness that gave her such a large head.

And now she began secretly turning up the clothes of every negro
child that came into that pen, and examining its legs, and still more
secretly examining her own, stretched out before her on the ground.
How long it took she does not remember; in fact, she could not have
known, for she had no way of measuring time except by her thoughts and
feelings. But in her own way and time the due process of deliberation
was fulfilled, and the quotient made clear that, bowed or not, all
children's legs were of equal length except her own, and all were
alike, not one full, strong, hard, the other soft, flabby, wrinkled,
growing