WHAT BECAME OF THEM
Well, of course, I can’t tell you _all_ that happened to these little
girls. I have tried to give you some idea of how they lived in their
Mississippi home, and I hope you have been amused and entertained; and
now as “Diddie” said about _her_ book, I’ve got to “wind up,” and tell
you what became of them.
The family lived happily on the plantation until the war broke out in
1861.
Then Major Waldron clasped his wife to his heart, kissed his daughters,
shook hands with his faithful slaves, and went as a soldier to
Virginia; and he is sleeping now on the slope of Malvern Hill, where he
“Nobly died for Dixie.”
The old house was burned during the war, and on the old plantation
where that happy home once stood there are now three or four chimneys
and an old tumbled-down gin-house. That is all.
The agony of those terrible days of war, together with the loss of her
husband and home, broke the heart and sickened the brain of Mrs.
Waldron; and in the State Lunatic Asylum is an old white-haired woman,
with a weary, patient look in her eyes, and this gentle old woman, who
sits day after day just looking out at the sunshine and the flowers, is
the once beautiful “mamma” of Diddie, Dumps and Tot.
Diddie grew up to be a very pretty, graceful woman, and when the war
began was in her eighteenth year. She was engaged to one of the young
men in the neighborhood; and though she was so young, her father
consented to the marriage, as her lover was going into the army, and
wanted to make her his wife before leaving. So, early in ’61, before
Major Waldron went to Virginia, there was a quiet wedding in the parlor
one night; and not many days afterwards the young Confederate soldier
donned his gray coat, and rode away with Forrest’s Cavalry.
“And ere long a messenger came,
Bringing the sad, sad story—
A riderless horse: a funeral march:
Dead on the field of glory!”
After his death her baby came to gladden the young widow’s desolate
life; and he is now almost grown, handsome and noble, and the idol of
his mother.
Diddie is a widow still. She was young and pretty when the war ended,
and has had many offers of marriage; but a vision of a cold white face,
with its fair hair dabbled in blood, is ever in her heart. So Diddie
lives for her boy. Their home is in Natchez now; for of course they
could never live in the old place any more. When the slaves were free,
they had no money to rebuild the houses, and the plantation has never
been worked since the war.
The land is just lying there useless, worthless; and the squirrels play
in and out among the trees, and the mocking-birds sing in the
honeysuckles and magnolias and rose-bushes where the front yard used to
be.
And at the quarters, where the happy slave-voices used to sing “Monkey
Motions,” and the merry feet used to dance to “Cotton-eyed Joe,” weeds
and thick underbrush have all grown up, and partridges build their
nests there; and sometimes, at dusk, a wild-cat or a fox may be seen
stealing across the old playground.
Tot, long years ago, before the war even, when she was yet a pure,
sinless little girl, was added to that bright band of angel children
who hover around the throne of God; and so she was already there, you
see, to meet and welcome her “papa” when his stainless soul went up
from Malvern Hill.
Well, for “Mammy” and “Daddy Jake” and “Aunt Milly” and “Uncle Dan’l,”
“dat angel” has long since “blowed de horn,” and I hope and believe
they are happily walking “dem golden streets” in which they had such
implicit faith, and of which they never wearied of telling.
And the rest of the negroes are all scattered; some doing well, some
badly; some living, some dead. Aunt Sukey’s Jim, who married Candace
that Christmas-night, is a politician. He has been in Legislature, and
spends his time in making long and exciting speeches to the loyal
leaguers against the Southern whites, all unmindful of his happy
childhood, and of the kind and generous master who strove in every way
to render his bondage (for which that master was in no way to blame) a
light and happy one.
Uncle Snake-bit Bob is living still. He has a little candy-store in a
country town. He does not meddle with politics. He says, “I don’t cas’
my suffrins fur de Dimercracks, nur yit fur de ’Publicans. I can’t go
’ginst my color by votin’ de Dimercrack papers; an’ ez fur dem
’Publicans! Well, ole Bob he done hyear wat de _Book_ say ’boutn
publicans an’ sinners, an’ dat’s ernuff fur him. He’s er gittin’ uperds
in years now; pretty soon he’ll hatter shove off fur dat ‘heb’nly
sho’,” an’ wen de Lord sen’ atter him, he don’t want dat angel ter
catch him in no kinwunshuns ’long wid ’publicans an’ sinners.’” And so
Uncle Bob attends to his store, and mends chairs and tubs, and deals
extensively in chickens and eggs; and perhaps he is doing just as well
as if he were in Congress.
Dilsey and Chris and Riar are all women now, and are all married and
have children of their own; and nothing delights them more than to tell
their little ones what “us an’ de white chil’en usen ter do.”
And the last I heard of Aunt Nancy, the “tender,” she was going to
school, but not progressing very rapidly. She did learn her letters
once, but, having to stop school to make a living, she soon forgot
them, and she explained it by saying:
“Yer see, honey, dat man wat larnt me dem readin’s, he wuz sich er
onstedfus’ man, an’ gittin’ drunk, an’ votin’ an’ sich, tell I
furgittin’ wat he larnt me; but dey’s er colored gemman fum de Norf
wat’s tuck him up er pay-school ober hyear in de ’catermy, an’ ef’n I
kin git him fur ter take out’n his pay in dat furmifuge wat I makes, I
’low ter go ter him er time er two, caze he’s er membah ub de Zion
Chu’ch, an’ er mighty stedfus’ man, an’ dat wat he larns me den I’ll
stay larnt.”
And Dumps? Well, the merry, lighthearted little girl is an “old maid”
now; and if Mammy could see her, she would think she was “steady”
enough at last.
Somebody, you know, must attend to the wants and comforts of the
gray-haired woman in the asylum; and Diddie had her boy to support and
educate, so Dumps teaches school and takes care of her mother, and is
doing what Uncle Snake-bit Bob told the Sunday-school children that God
had made them to do; for
Dumps is doing “DE BES’ SHE KIN.”
THE END