Plantation Sketches | Page 3

our departure broke dark and very cold, with little spits of snow beginning to fall. I was much afraid that we should be compelled to yield to the hospitable objections to our going, but at last we succeeded in getting off. We crossed at Pollock's (your great-grandfather's ferry), so that should the storm increase we need not leave our comfortable carriage until we should be at home. It was a lonely drive; the snow fell steadily but so gently that I enjoyed seeing the earth and the trees, the fences and the few lonely houses that we passed all draped in white; though we were warmly wrapped, the anticipation of the crackling fires in our great old fireplaces was delightful. When we got home, the first sound that greeted our ears, as we stepped upon the piazza, was a mournful, long-drawn hymn. Shivering and damp from our walk up the yard, we opened the door, to see Minerva, with kilted skirts, standing in an expanse of frozen slush and singing at the top of her voice, while she sluiced fresh deluges of water from her shuck brush. I was too disgusted for words, but resolved that this should not occur again. As soon as I could communicate with the outside world I had the hall floors covered with oilcloth (then the fashionable covering). Also, Minerva was displaced, and Phyllis reigned in her stead, but Minerva, nevertheless, always indulged in the belief that she was indispensable to our happiness and comfort.
In honor of my advent as mistress, the floors had been freshly carpeted with very pretty bright carpets, which were in danger of being utterly ruined by the muddy shoes of the raw plantation servants, recently brought in to be trained for the house. Although the soil generally was a soft, sandy loam, I observed in my horseback rides numbers of round stones scattered about in the fields. They were curious stones, and looked perfectly accidental and quite out of place. Their presence excited my interest, and aroused my curiosity as to their origin, which has never been gratified. They seemed so out of place in those flat fields! However, I determined to utilize them and had a number collected and brought into the yard, and with them I had a pretty paved walk made from the house to the kitchen.
Our house stood upon what was known as the "Second Land," which meant a slight rise above the wide, low grounds, which were formerly, I believe, the bed of the sluggish stream now known as the Roanoke. All along the edge of these Second Lands, just where they joined the low grounds, there was a bed of beautiful small gravel. I was delighted when I discovered this and at once interested myself in having a gravel walk made up to the front of the house, and this was, when completed, all that I had hoped, and served as a perfect protection against the offending mud.
There was one evil, though, which I could not guard against, and this was the clumsy though well-meaning stupidity of a plantation negro. One afternoon the house became offensive with the odor of burning wool. I followed up the scent and, after opening several doors, I finally traced it to the dining-room. It was filled with smoke, and there, in front of an enormous fire, squatted Abby. In a fit of most unaccountable industry she had undertaken to clean the brass andirons, and had drawn them red hot from the fire and placed them upon the carpet. Of course, four great holes were the result and, as the carpets had been made in New York, there were no pieces with which the holes could be mended. As I had already decided her to be too stupid to be worth the trouble of training, I felt no desire to find fault with her, so I merely told her to put them back, or rather stood by to see it done. I did not keep her in the house after that, but do not suppose that she ever at all realized the mischief that she had done.
One of my amusements was to watch the birds; they were so numerous, and appeared to be so tame. I set traps for them. This was childish, but I was very young and often rather at a loss to find something to do; so I used to take with me my small house boy, "Minor," whom I was training to be a grand butler; he would carry the trap and, after it had been set and baited, I would make him guide me to the trees where the sweetest persimmons grew; there I would while away the morning and on the next we would find one or more birds fluttering in the trap,