recollections better, times, who spoke to me of Mr. ----'s grandfather,
and of the early days of the plantation, when they were young and strong,
and worked as their children and grandchildren were now working, neither
for love nor yet for money. One of these old crones, a hideous, withered,
wrinkled piece of womanhood, said that she had worked as long as her
strength had lasted, and that then she had still been worth her keep, for,
said she, 'Missus, tho' we no able to work, we make little niggers for
massa.' Her joy at seeing her present owner was unbounded, and she kept
clapping her horny hands together and exclaiming, 'while there is life
there is hope; we seen massa before we die.' These demonstrations of
regard were followed up by piteous complaints of hunger and rheumatism,
and their usual requests for pittances of food and clothing, to which we
responded by promises of additions in both kinds; and I was extricating
myself as well as I could from my petitioners, with the assurance that I
would come by-and-bye and visit them again, when I felt my dress suddenly
feebly jerked, and a shrill cracked voice on the other side of me
exclaimed, 'Missus, no go yet--no go away yet; you no see me, missus, when
you come by-and-bye; but,' added the voice in a sort of wail, which seemed
to me as if the thought was full of misery, 'you see many, many of my
offspring.' These melancholy words, particularly the rather unusual one at
the end of the address, struck me very much. They were uttered by a
creature which _was_ a woman, but looked like a crooked ill-built figure
set up in a field to scare crows, with a face infinitely more like a mere
animal's than any human countenance I ever beheld, and with that peculiar
wild restless look of indefinite and, at the same time, intense sadness
that is so remarkable in the countenance of some monkeys. It was almost
with an effort that I commanded myself so as not to withdraw my dress from
the yellow crumpled filthy claws that griped it, and it was not at last
without the authoritative voice of the overseer that the poor creature
released her hold of me.