Suburban Sketches | Page 7

she came to
us, it was agreed that she should go to school; but she overruled her
mother in this as in everything else, and never went. Except
Sunday-school lessons, she had no other instruction than that her
mistress gave her in the evenings, when a heavy day's play and the
natural influences of the hour conspired with original causes to render
her powerless before words of one syllable.
The first week of her service she was obedient and faithful to her duties;
but, relaxing in the atmosphere of a house which seems to demoralize
all menials, she shortly fell into disorderly ways of lying in wait for
callers out of doors, and, when people rang, of running up the front
steps, and letting them in from the outside. As the season expanded,
and the fine weather became confirmed, she modified even this form of
service, and spent her time in the fields, appearing at the house only
when nature importunately craved molasses. She had a parrot-like
quickness, so far as music was concerned, and learned from the Roman
statuary to make the groves and half-finished houses resound,
"Camicia rossa, Ove t' ascondi? T' appella Italia,-- Tu non respondi!"
She taught the Garibaldi song, moreover, to all the neighboring
children, so that I sometimes wondered if our street were not about to
march upon Rome in a body.
In her untamable disobedience, Naomi alone betrayed her sylvan blood,
for she was in all other respects negro and not Indian. But it was of her
aboriginal ancestry that Mrs. Johnson chiefly boasted,--when not
engaged in argument to maintain the superiority of the African race.
She loved to descant upon it as the cause and explanation of her own
arrogant habit of feeling; and she seemed indeed to have inherited
something of the Indian's hauteur along with the Ethiop's supple

cunning and abundant amiability. She gave many instances in which
her pride had met and overcome the insolence of employers, and the
kindly old creature was by no means singular in her pride of being
reputed proud.
She could never have been a woman of strong logical faculties, but she
had in some things a very surprising and awful astuteness. She seldom
introduced any purpose directly, but bore all about it and then suddenly
sprung it upon her unprepared antagonist. At other times she obscurely
hinted a reason, and left a conclusion to be inferred; as when she
warded off reproach for some delinquency by saying in a general way
that she had lived with ladies who used to come scolding into the
kitchen after they had taken their bitters. "Quality ladies took their
bitters regular," she added, to remove any sting of personality from her
remark; for, from many things she had let fall, we knew that she did not
regard us as quality. On the contrary, she often tried to overbear us with
the gentility of her former places; and would tell the lady over whom
she reigned, that she had lived with folks worth their three and four
hundred thousand dollars, who never complained as she did of the
ironing. Yet she had a sufficient regard for the literary occupations of
the family, Mr. Johnson having been an author. She even professed to
have herself written a book, which was still in manuscript, and
preserved somewhere among her best clothes.
It was well, on many accounts, to be in contact with a mind so original
and suggestive as Mrs. Johnson's. We loved to trace its intricate yet
often transparent operations, and were perhaps too fond of explaining
its peculiarities by facts of ancestry,--of finding hints of the Powwow
or the Grand Custom in each grotesque development. We were
conscious of something warmer in this old soul than in ourselves, and
something wilder, and we chose to think it the tropic and the untracked
forest. She had scarcely any being apart from her affection; she had no
morality, but was good because she neither hated nor envied; and she
might have been a saint far more easily than far more civilized people.
There was that also in her sinuous yet malleable nature, so full of guile
and so full of goodness, that reminded us pleasantly of lowly folk in
elder lands, where relaxing oppressions have lifted the restraints of fear
between master and servant, without disturbing the familiarity of their
relation. She advised freely with us upon all household matters, and

took a motherly interest in whatever concerned us. She could be
flattered or caressed into almost any service, but no threat or command
could move her. When she erred, she never acknowledged her wrong in
words, but handsomely expressed her regrets in a pudding, or sent up
her apologies in a favorite dish secretly prepared. We grew so well used
to