k up
some chips, for Miss Mary and myself have to prepare the breakfast.
You children will have to learn to work. Do you understand me, Rit and
Henry?" "Yes, Missus, we understand." And away we flew, laughing, and
thinking it a great joke that we, Massa's pets, must learn to work.

But it was a sad, sad change on the old plantation, and the beautiful,
proud Sunny South, with its masters and mistresses, was bowed beneath
the sin brought about by slavery. It was a terrible blow to the owners
of plantations and slaves, and their children would feel it more than
they, for they had been reared to be waited upon by willing or
unwilling slaves.

In this place I will insert a poem my young mistress taught us, for
she was always reading poems and good stories. But first I will record
a talk I heard between my master and mistress. They were sitting in
the dining-room, and we children were standing around the table. My
mistress said, "I suppose, as Nancy has never returned, we had better
keep Henry, Caroline and Louise until they are of age." "Yes, we
will," said Massa, Miss Mary and Miss Martha, "but it is 'man proposes
and God disposes.'"

So in the following pages you will read the sequel to my childhood
life in the Sunny South.

Right after the war when my mother had got settled in her hut, with
her little brood hovered around her, from which she had been so long
absent, we had nothing to eat, and nothing to sleep on save some old
pieces of horse-blankets and hay that the soldiers gave her. The
first day in the hut was a rainy day; and as night drew near it grew
more fierce, and we children had gathered some little fagots to make a
fire by the time mother came home, with something for us to eat, such
as she had gathered through the day. It was only corn meal and pease
and ham-bone and skins which she had for our supper. She had started a
little fire, and said, "Some of you close that door," for it was cold.
She swung the pot over the fire and filled it with the pease and
ham-bone and skins. Then she seated her little brood around the fire
on the pieces of blanket, where we watched with all our eyes, our
hearts filled with desire, looking to see what she would do next. She
took down an old broken earthen bowl, and tossed into it the little
meal she had brought, stirring it up with water, making a hoe cake.
She said, "One of you draw that griddle out here," and she placed it
on the few little coals. Perhaps this griddle you