A BIT OF RURAL GEORGIA
To walk with the morning and watch its rose unfold;
To drowse with the noontide lulled in its heart of gold;
To lie with the night-time and dream the dreams of old.
--MADISON CAWEIN.
A man I know studies as a hobby something which he calls "graphics"--the
term denoting the reaction of the mind to certain words. One of the
words he used in an experiment with me was "winter." When he said
"winter" there instantly came to me the picture of a snowstorm in
Quebec. I saw the front of the Hotel Frontenac at dusk through a mist of
driving snow. There were lights in the windows. A heavy wind was blowing
and as I leaned against it the front of my overcoat was plastered with
sticky white flakes. The streets and sidewalks were deep with snow, and
the only person besides myself in the vision was a sentry standing with
his gun in the lee of the vestibule outside the local militia
headquarters.
If my friend were to come now and try me with the word "spring," I know
what picture it would call to mind. I should see the Burge plantation,
near Covington, Georgia: the simple old white house with its rose-clad
porch, or "gallery," its grove of tall trees, its carriage-house, its
well-house, and other minor dependencies clustering nearby like
chickens about a white hen, its background the rolling cottonfields,
their red soil glowing salmon-colored in the sun. For, as I was never so
conscious of the brutality of winter as in that evening snowstorm at
Quebec, I was never so conscious, as at the time of our visit to the
Burge plantation, of the superlative soft sweetness of the spring.
In seasons, as in other things, we have our individual preferences.
Melancholy natures usually love autumn, with its colorings so like sweet
sad minor chords. But what kind of natures they are which rejoice in
spring, which feel that with each spring the gloomy past is blotted out,
and life, with all its opportunities, begins anew--what kind of natures
they are which recognize April instead of January as the beginning of
their year I shall not attempt to tell, for mine is such a nature, and
one must not act at once as subject and diagnostician.
So long as I endure, spring can never come again without turning my
thoughts to northwestern Georgia; to the peculiar penetrating warmth
which passed through the clothing to the body and made one feel that one
was not surrounded by mere air, but was immersed in a dry bath of some
infinitely superior vapor, a vapor volatile, soothing, tonic, distilled,
it seemed, from the earth, from pine trees, tulip trees, balm-of-Gilead
trees, (or "bam" trees, as they call them), blossoming Judas trees,
Georgia crabapple, dogwood pink and white, peach blossom, wistaria,
sweet-shrub, dog violets, pansy violets, Cherokee roses, wild
honeysuckle and azalia, and the evanescent green of new treetops, all
carried in solution in the sunlight. By day the brilliant cardinal adds
his fine note of color and sound, but at night he is silent, and when
the moon comes out one hears the mockingbird and, it may be also, two
whippoorwills, one in the grove near the house, one in the woods across
the road, calling back and forth. Then one is tempted to step down from
the porch, and follow the voices of the birds into the vague recesses of
a night webbed with dark tree shadows outlined in blue moonlight.
Small wonder it is, if, as report says, no houseparty on a southern
plantation is a success unless young couples become "sort of engaged,"
and if in a region so provocative in springtime under a full moon, a
distinction is recognized between being merely "engaged," and being
engaged _to be married_.
One Georgia belle we met, a sloe-eyed girl whose reputation not only for
beauty but for charm reached through the entire South, had, at the time
of our visit, recently become engaged in the more grave and permanent
sense.
"How does it seem?" a girl friend asked her.
"I feel," she answered, "like a man who has built up a large business
and is about to go into the hands of a receiver."
Such ways as those girls have! Such voices! Such eyes! And such names,
too! Names which would not fit at all into a northern setting,
relatively so hard and unsentimental, but which, when one becomes
accustomed to them, take their place gracefully and harmoniously in the
southern picture. The South likes diminutives and combinations in its
women's names. Its Harriets, Franceses, Sarahs, and Marthas, become
Hatties, Fannies, Sallies and Patsies, and Patsy sometimes undergoes a
further transition and becomes Passie. Moreover, where these diminutives
have been passed down for several generations in a family, their origin
is sometimes lost sight of, and the diminutive becomes the actual
baptismal name. In one family of my acquaintance, for example, the name
Passie has long been handed down from mother to daughter. The original
great-grandmother Passie was christened Martha but was at first called
Patsy; then, because her black mammy was also named Patsy, the daughter
of the house came to be known, for purposes of differentiation, as
Passie, and when she married and had a daughter of her own, the child
was christened Passie. In this family the name May has more recently
been adopted as a middle name, and it is customary for familiars of the
youngest Passie, to address her not merely as Passie, but as Passie-May.
The inclusion of the second name, in this fashion, is another custom not
uncommon in the South. In Atlanta alone I heard of ladies habitually
referred to as Anna-Laura, Hattie-May, Lollie-Belle, Sally-Maud,
Nora-Belle, Mattie-Sue, Emma-Belle, Lottie-Belle, Susie-May, Lula-Belle,
Sallie-Fannie, Hattie-Fannie, Lou-Ellen, Allie-Lou, Clara-Belle,
Mary-Ella, and Hattie-Belle. Another young lady was known to her friends
as Jennie-D.
The train from Atlanta set us down at Covington, Georgia, or rather at
the station which lies between the towns of Covington and Oxford--for
when this railroad was built neither town would allow it a right of way,
and to this day each is connected with the station by a street car line,
either line equipped with one diminutive car, a pair of disconsolate
mules, and a driver. Covington is the County seat, a quiet southern
town, part old, part new, with a look of rural prosperity about it.
Stopping at the postoffice to inquire for mail we saw this peremptory
sign displayed:
When the window is down don't bang around and ask for a stamp or
two.
--J.L. CALLAWAY, Postmaster.
As the window was down we tiptoed out and went upon our way, driving
through Oxford before going to the plantation. This town was named for
Oxford, England, and is, like its namesake, a college town. A small and
very old Methodist educational institution, with a pretty though ragged
campus and fine trees, is all there is to Oxford, save a row of
ante-bellum houses. One of them, a pleasant white mansion, half
concealed by the huge magnolias which stand in its front yard, was at
one time the residence of General Longstreet. The old front gate,
hanging on a stone post, was made by the general with his own hands--and
well made, for it is to-day as good a gate as ever. Corra Harris lived
at one time in Oxford; her husband, Rev. Lundy H. Harris, having been a
professor at the college.
* * * * *
Though plantation life has necessarily changed since the war, I do not
believe that there is in the whole South a plantation where it has
changed less than on the Burge plantation. In appearance the place is
not as Sherman's men found it, for they tore down the fences and ruined
the beautiful old-fashioned garden, and neither has been replaced; nor,
of course, is it run, so far as practical affairs are concerned, as it
was before the War; that is to say, instead of being operated as a unit
of nine-hundred acres, it is now worked chiefly on shares, and is
divided up into "one mule farms" and "two mule farms," these being
tracts of about thirty and sixty acres, respectively, thirty acres being
approximately the area which can be worked by a man and a mule.
Practically all the negroes on the place--perhaps a hundred in
number--are either former slaves of the Burge family, or the children,
grandchildren, and great-grandchildren of slaves who lived on the
plantation. That is one reason why the plantation is less changed in
spirit than are many others. The Burges were religious people, used
their slaves kindly, and brought them up well, so that the negroes on
the plantation to-day are respectable, and in some instances, exemplary
people, very different from the vagrant negro type which has developed
since the War, making labor conditions in some parts of the South
uncertain, and plantation life, in some sections, not safe for
unprotected women.
The present proprietors of the Burge plantation are two ladies,
granddaughters of Mrs. Thomas Burge, who lived here, a widow, with a
little daughter, when General Sherman and his hosts came by. These
ladies frequently spend months at the plantation without male protectors
save only the good negroes of their own place, who look after them with
the most affectionate devotion. True, the ladies keep an ugly looking
but mild mannered bulldog, of which the negroes are generally afraid;
true also they carry a revolver when they drive about the country in
their motor, and keep revolvers handy in their rooms; but these
precautions are not taken, they told me, because of any doubts about the
men on their place, their one fear being of tramp negroes, passing by.
Of their own negroes several are remarkable, particularly one old
couple, perfect examples of the fine ante-bellum type so much beloved in
the South, and so much regretted as it disappears.
During the period of twenty years or more, while the owners were absent,
growing up and receiving their education, the whole place, indoors and
out, was in charge of Uncle George and Aunt Sidney. The two lived, and
still do live, in one wing of the house--over which Aunt Sidney presides
as housekeeper and cook, as her mother, Aunt Liddy, did before her. Aunt
Liddy died only a short time ago, aged several years over a hundred.
Uncle George supervises all the business of the plantation, as he has
done for thirty or forty years. He collects all rents, markets the crops
and receives the payments, makes purchases, pays bills, and keeps peace
between the tenants--nor could any human being be more honorable or
possess a finer, sweeter dignity. As for devotion, when the little girls
who were away returned after all the years as grown women, every ribbon,
every pin in that house was where it had been left, and the place was no
less neat than if the "white folks" had constantly remained there.
Before Georgia went dry it was customary for negroes of the rougher sort
to get drunk in town every Saturday night. Drunken negroes would
consequently be passing by, all night, on their way to their homes,
yelling and (after the manner of their kind when intoxicated) shooting
their revolvers in the air. Every Saturday night, when the ladies were
at home, Uncle George would quietly take his gun and place himself on
the porch, remaining there until the last of the obstreperous wayfarers
had passed.
Uncle Abe and Uncle Wiley are two other worthy and venerable men who
live in cabins on the place. Both were there when Sherman's army passed
upon its devastating way, and both were carried off, as were thousands
upon thousands of other negroes out of that wide belt across the State
of Georgia, which was overrun in the course of the March to the Sea.
"Ah was goin' to mill wid de ox-caht," Uncle Abe told me, "when de
soljas dey kim 'long an' got me. Dey tol' me, 'Heah, nigga! Git out dat
caht, an' walk behin'. When _it_ moves _you_ move; when _it_ stops _you_
stop!' An' like dat Ah walk all de way to Savannah [two hundred and
fifty miles]. Den, after dat, dey took us 'long up No'th--me an' ma
brotha Wiley, ovah deh."
I asked him what regiment he went with. He said it was the Twenty-second
Indiana, and that Dr. Joe Stilwell, of that regiment, who came from a
place near Madison, Indiana ("Ah reckon de town was name Brownstown"),
was good to him. An officer whom he knew, he said, was Captain John
Snodgrass, and another Major Tom Shay.
"All Ah was evvuh wo'ied about aftuh dey kim tuck me," he declared, "was
gittin' somep'n t' eat. Dat kinda put me on de wonduh, sometahmes, but
dey used us all right. Dr. Pegg--him dat did de practice on de
plantation befo' de Wah--he tol' de niggas dat de Yankees would put gags
in deh moufs an' lead 'em eroun' like dey wuz cattle. But deh wa' n't
like dat nohow. I b'longed to de Secon' Division, Thuhd B'gade,
Fou'teenth Co' [corps]. Cap'n Snodgrass, he got to be lieutenant-cuhnel.
He was de highes' man Ah evuh hel' any convuhsation wid, but I _saw_ all
de gennuls of dat ahmy."
Uncle Wiley is older than Uncle Abe. He was already a grown man with
three children when taken away by some of Sherman's men. He told me he
was with the Fifty-second Ohio, and mentioned Captain Shepard.
The two brothers got as far as Washington, D.C.
"We got los' togedduh in de U.S. buildin' in dat city," said Uncle
Wiley. "De President of de U.S. right at dat tahme he was daid. He was
kill', Ah don' s'pose it wuz a week befo' we got to Wash'n, D.C."
"How did you happen to come all the way back?" I asked.
"Well-l," ruminated the old man, "home was always a-restin' on mah min'.
Ah kep' thinkin' 'bout home. So aftuh de Wah ceasted Ah jus' kim 'long
back."
Many of the old plantation customs still survive. A little before noon
the bell is rung to summon the hands from the cotton fields. Over the
red plowed soil you hear a darky cry, a melodious "Oh-_oh_-oh!" as wild
and musical as the cries of the south-Italian olive gatherers. The
planters cease their work, mules stand still, traces are unhooked from
singletrees, and chain-ends thrown over the mules' backs; then the men
mount the animals and ride in to the midday meal, the women trudging
after. Those who rent land, or work on shares, go to their own cabins,
while those employed by the hour or by the day (the rate of pay is ten
cents an hour or seventy-five cents a day) come to the kitchen to be
fed. Nor is it customary to stop there at feeding negroes. As in the old
days, any negro who has come upon an errand or who has "stopped by" to
sell supplies, or for whatever purpose, expects to stay for "dinner,"
and makes it a point to arrive about noon. Thus from sixteen to twenty
negroes are fed daily at the Burge plantation house.
The old Christmas traditions are likewise kept up. On Christmas day the
negroes come flocking up to the house for their gifts. Their first
concern is to attempt to cry "Christmas gift!" to others, before it can
be said to them--for according to ancient custom the one who says the
words first must have a gift from the other.