Mam Lyddys Recognition | Page 2

Betty across, and then wading back, had offered to carry
Mam' Lyddy over, too.
"Go way f'om heah, boy, you can't carry me."
"Yes, I can, Mam' Lyddy. You don't know how strong I am." He

squared himself for the feat.
She laughed at him, and with a flash in his gray eyes he suddenly
grabbed her.
"I 'll show you."
There was quite a scuffle. She was too heavy for him, but he won her
friendship then and there, and as he grew up straight and sturdy, the
friendship ripened. That he teased her and laughed at her did not in the
least offend her. No one else could have taken such a liberty with her,
but Cabell's references to old Caesar's declining health, and his
innuendoes whenever she was "fixed up" that she was "looking around"
in advance only amused her. It made no difference to her that he was
poor, while several others of Betty's beaux were rich. He was "a
gent'man," and she was an aristocrat.
At times they had pitched battles, but each knew that the other was an
ally.
Cabell won his final victory by an audacity which few would have
dared venture on. Among his rivals was one Mr. Hereford, whom he
particularly disliked, partly because he frequently "outsat" him, and
partly because he thought Miss Betty favored his attentions too much,
and whom Mammy Lyddy detested because he always ignored her.
Cabell charged her with deserting his cause and going over to the side
of Mr. Hereford, and threatened to carry off the prize in spite of her and
her ally.
"You cyant cyah off nothin'," she said with a sniff of mock disdain. His
eyes snapped. Without a word he seized her, and notwithstanding her
resistance he lifted her, and flinging her over his shoulder, as if she had
been a sack of corn, stalked up the steps and into the house, where he
set her down abashed and vanquished before her astonished young
mistress. The old woman pretended to be furious, but that day Cabell
Graeme carried off more than Mam' Lyddy.
When Cabel and pretty Betty were married, Mam' Lyddy threw in her

lot with "her lamb."
Through all the evil days of carpet-bag rule, no white, not even Cabell
Graeme himself, who was a leader of the young men, had looked with
more burning contempt on the new-comers, or shown a sterner front to
the miscreants who despoiled the country. And when Negro rule was at
its worst, Mam' Lyddy was its most bitter reviler. Cabell Graeme was a
captain among the young men who finally put down the evil element
that had been running its riotous course. And during the fierce fight that
was waged, he was much away from home; but he knew that in Mam'
Lyddy he had left as redoubtable a guardian of his wife and babies as
ever kept watch on a picket line.
Among the most obnoxious of the colored leaders was one Amos
Brown, a young negro with some education, who to the gift of fluency
added enough shrewdness to become a leader. He was while in power
one of the most dangerous men in the State, and so long as he had
backing enough, he staggered at nothing to keep the negroes stirred up.
One of his schemes was to get money from the negroes with which to
pay, as he claimed, ten per cent, for the best plantations in the State,
after which, according to his account, the Government was to give them
the places. This scheme worked well enough till the day of reckoning
came, but happily it came. Among those who were duped was old
Caesar, who, unknown to Mam' Lyddy, invested all his little savings in
Amos Brown's homestead-plan and was robbed. Partly in terror of
Mam' Lyddy and partly in hopes of saving his money, the old man
made a full disclosure of the scheme, and with the proof he furnished,
Cabell Graeme and others succeeded in sending the statesman to the
penitentiary.
What Caesar possibly had to endure from Mam' Lyddy, only those
could imagine who knew her blistering tongue. From that time she took
herself not only everything that she made, but every cent that old
Caesar made.
"You keep 'dis for me, Marse Cab. I 'm never goin' to trust dat Caesar
wid a cent long as I live. A nigger ain't got a bit o' sense about money."

But though Caesar would gladly have paid all he made to purchase
immunity from her revilings, it is probable that he heard of his error at
least three times a day during the rest of his natural life.

II
As long as the old people lived, the French place was kept up; but the
exactions