out of a knot at the hip. A whole psychological period
apparently lay between that conclusion and--a broom-handle
walking-stick; but the broomstick came, as it was bound to
come,--thank heaven!--from that premise, and what with stretching one
limb to make it longer, and doubling up the other to make it shorter,
she invented that form of locomotion which is still carrying her
through life, and with no more exaggerated leg-crookedness than many
careless negroes born with straight limbs display. This must have been
when she was about eight or nine. Hobbling on a broomstick, with, no
doubt, the same weird, wizened face as now, an innate sense of the
fitness of things must have suggested the kerchief tied around her big
head, and the burlaps rag of an apron in front of her linsey-woolsey
rag of a gown, and the bit of broken pipe-stem in the corner of her
mouth, where the pipe should have been, and where it was in after
years. That is the way she recollected herself, and that is the way
one recalls her now, with a few modifications.

The others came and went, but she was always there. It wasn't long
before she became "little Mammy" to the grown folks too; and the
newest inmates soon learned to cry: "Where's little Mammy?" "Oh,
little Mammy! little Mammy! Such a misery in my head [or my back, or
my stomach]! Can't you help me, little Mammy?" It was curious what a
quick eye she had for symptoms and ailments, and what a quick ear
for suffering, and how apt she was at picking up, remembering, and
inventing remedies. It never occurred to her not to crouch at the
head or the foot of a sick pallet, day and night through. As for the
nights, she said she dared not close her eyes of nights. The room they
were in was so vast, and sometimes the negroes lay so thick on the
floor, rolled in their blankets (you know, even in the summer they
sleep under blankets), all snoring so loudly, she would never have
heard a groan or a whimper any more than they did, if she had slept,
too. And negro mothers are so careless and such heavy sleepers. All
night she would creep at regular intervals to the different pallets,
and draw the little babies from under, or away from, the heavy, inert
impending mother forms. There is no telling how many she thus saved
from being overlaid and smothered, or, what was worse, maimed and
crippled.

Whenever a physician came in, as he was sometimes called, to look at
a valuable investment or to furbish up some piece of