Part 13 (1/2)
I have reflected somewhat since those days, and when a woman tells me now that she is suffering from nervous prostration I know that she is struggling with a disease--a mournful, painful, destructive actuality.
Emerson says, ”when one is ill something the devil's the matter.” I know it is so with a woman, for all the peace and joy of life go out of her with sickness. I believe, too, that she would be subject to less nervous prostration if she had greater part in the more enlarging and enn.o.bling human activities. But as mother earth reinvigorated him who touched her, so what life we have comes from G.o.d, and indwelling with the Divine ought to renew us body and soul. Christ Himself may not have revealed the miracle of health to the apostles, but He taught them to use it. Mankind soon lost connection with the spiritual dynamo of revitalization--except most intermittingly. But has this been so through necessity or by reason of gross materialism? Among ”the greater things than these” of the promise, may not highly spiritualized natures already be refinding the natural laws of healthful living through emphasizing the rightful dominance of man's spiritual being? ”All my fresh springs are in Thee!” ”I will arise in newness of life” cannot refer to the soul without including the body, for the greater includes the less. The tendency to give less and less medicine; the declaration of the medical world that drugs are not curative; the healing of the body by the invisible forces of nature, as is being done every day--all these things electrify with the hope that the world is about to discover ”the miracles in which we are nourished.” The revelation of the 20th century may be how to pull out that ”nail of pain”
which, according to Plato, fastens the mind to the body; and the joy of simple, harmonious existence may become a reasonable hope to suffering mortals.
After this experience of illness I made a trip through Canada and the East. With new vigor and the old interest I resumed my home duties and was preparing to enjoy our New Orleans carnival season, when one morning the housemaid announced: ”Mis' Cal_line_, I do b'lieve Rex is come, fur dar's er ole man at de do' wid er shabby umbril an' de _ole-es'_ han'bag--an' he say he's you' cousin!” I hastened to meet him, and knew at once who it was; but the old man was in an exhausted condition. He said: ”I have some brandy with me, and I need it. I have been very sick, but I thought I was well enough to come to see you once more before I die.” I administered a stimulant to old cousin Jimmie, and in a cheerful strain he continued: ”Oh, you're so like your ma, cousin. She was an angel, and your worldly-minded old pa gave her lots of trouble, for your ma was pious, and she had a hard time to get him into the church. Cousin David was a fine man, too, and he had to give in at last to the blessed persuasion of cousin Betsey, your angel-mother.”
The next day I observed cousin Jimmie was holding a wooden whistle in his hand, and blowing softly into it. I inquired what it was. ”This whistle,”
he said, ”is older than your old spinning-wheel and the ancient chiny in the corner cupboard.” ”But, I enquired, what is the use of it?” Cousin Jimmie replied: ”They called up the crows with it, so they could shoot 'em.” ”I always regarded crows as harmless creatures whose inky blackness of color was very useful as a comparison,” I replied. ”Well, you never knowed anything at all about crows,” said cousin Jimmie. ”I tell you, when a crow lights on a year o' corn, they eats every single grain before they stop; and I tell you they are suspicious critters, too--these crows! I used to thread a horsehair into a needle and stick it in a grain o' corn, and draw the hair through, and tie it, and throw it around, and they would pick it up and swallow the corn. Then I would stand off and watch the rascals scratchin' their beaks tryin' to get rid o' the hair, until they got so bothered they would quit that field and never come back. I was a little boy, them days.” ”Yes,” said I, ”and boys are so cruel.” ”Maybe so,” said cousin Jimmie; ”but I wa'n't 'lowed to have a gun to shoot 'em--crows nor nuthin' else. Boys was boys them days, not undersized men struttin' 'round with a cigyar in their mouths, too grand to lay holt of a plow handle. Why, some big boys, sixteen years old, can't ketch a horse and saddle him, let alone put him to a buggy all right. I know that for a fact!”
”Do you like roast lamb and green peas, cousin Jimmie?--for that is what we have for dinner to-day; but I can order anything else you like better?”
”I'm not hard to please, cousin,” he answered. ”I like good fat mutton--and turnips; but cousin, them turnips must be biled good and _done_. _Done_ turnips never hurt n.o.body. Why, when I had the pneumony last winter I sent and got a bagful--and I had 'em cooked all right; and way in the night, whilst I had a fever, I would retch out and get a turnip and eat it. Bile 'em good and done and they can't hurt n.o.body--_sick_ or well.”
”I never heard of sick people eating turnips,” said I.
”But you see I have, and has eat 'em, and am here to tell you about 'em.”
”General Grant is nominated for President,” said I, looking over the morning paper. ”Grant, did you say? I'll never vote for him! He wasn't satisfied with $25,000 for salary, but wanted $50,000; and nex' time he'll want a hundred thousand. Do you know, cousin,” said the old man, ”that them Yankees robbed me of one hundred and fifty n.i.g.g.e.rs? The government ought to pay me for 'em. They had no more right to take them n.i.g.g.e.rs than they had to steal my horses and mules--which they stole at the same time.
I tell you, they must _pay_ me for my property!” and cousin Jimmie came down with a heavy blow of his walking cane on the rug. ”Ef they don't pay me they are the grandest set o' villyuns on top o' earth! When the blue-coated raskils was goin' up the Cheneyville road they met up with two runaways old Mr. Ironton had caught and hobbled with a chain. A Yankee said it was a shame for a human bein' to be treated so. Mrs. Ironton flung back at 'em: 'I don't care! you may show them to the President himself, and hang them round his neck, if you like.' The old woman was so sa.s.sy that the man simmered down. I heard another officer inquire very perlite, ef it was customary to sarve the n.i.g.g.e.rs this way, and I said we had to do something to keep 'em down in their places; and, no matter how bad a n.i.g.g.e.r was, he was too valuable to kill, so we punished 'em in other ways.
”To-morrow is my birthday,” sighed cousin Jimmie, ”and I'll be eighty-eight years old.” I celebrated the day for him and made him some presents; and I asked him to tell me bravely and truly whether or not he would be willing to live his life over, to acc.u.mulate all the money and estate he once possessed, to become a second time sick and old and dest.i.tute. Cousin Jimmie was silent a moment; then his aged eyes twinkled, and a smile spread over his still handsome old face: ”I would try it over; life is mighty sweet; I'm not ready to give it up, cousin.” ”But you must before long relinquish all there is in this life.” ”Well,” said he, ”I've made pervision. I gave my niece Mary all my silver and my red satin furniture, and my brother has promised to bury me with my people in Mississippi. I'm all right there.”
”I've heard, cousin Jimmie, that you denied the globular shape of the earth. How is that?”
”Why, I _know_ the earth is flat. 'Tain't fas.h.i.+onable to say so, but it don't stand to reason that the world is round and flyin' in the air, like folks say. 'Tain't no sech thing--else eyes ain't no account.”
Two years more of this life, and then old cousin Jimmie--who was my father's first cousin on his mother's side--was able from some other planet, we hope, to investigate the shape of this one to which he had clung so loyally.
CHAPTER XVIII.
ENTER--AS AN EPISODE--MRS. COLUMBIANA PORTERFIELD.
There are characters of such marked and peculiar individuality that they loom upon one's consciousness like Stonehenge, or any other magnificent ruin, as Charles Lamb says of Mrs. Conrady's ugliness; and their discovery ”is an era in one's existence.” In this way one of my intimate a.s.sociates, Mrs. Columbiana Porterfield, stands preeminent in my early and later recollections; but I was sorry to see into her. Every time we were together it impressed me more vividly than before, that self was the great center about which everything revolved for her. All her sympathies were related to that idol. No small human creature interested her large mind, except as connected with herself. She was devoted to her church, especially to its ministers, but it was a sanctuary where she wors.h.i.+ped self in the guise of G.o.dliness, and her own honor and glory was what she worked for in the name of the Master. At one time the sense of her colossal selfishness so ate into my spirit of charity that I tried to work it off by writing out, to one of my intimates, the following letters which embrace actual incidents and individual experiences through which are revealed Columbiana's inordinate ambitions and desires for distinction--”her mark, her token; that by which she was known.” Perhaps she may stand like a lighthouse to warn off other women from the same shoals.
NUMBER 1.
Miss Columbiana Porterfield was fat, fair, and almost forty years old when she became a winter visitor at Colonel Johnson's plantation home in the far South. She was so much respected and admired by the Colonel that when his wife died he urgently invited her to fill the void in his heart and home.
The position seemed advantageous, and the lady accepted the situation, entering confidently upon the duties involved, resolving to adapt herself to her surroundings when she could not bend circ.u.mstances to her own strong will. She was a sensible woman, and her good husband loved her with a doting, foolish fondness which he had never exhibited to the departed wife of his youth.
The family servants did not hesitate in giving her the allegiance due to power and place, and they were careful to pay all deference to the new mistress; therefore Mrs. Johnson was surprised to overhear the housewoman saying to the cook: ”I tell yer dat ar white 'oman from de Norf ain't got dem keen eyes in dat big head o' hern for nuthin'; I'm afeered of her, I is dat.” The lady was wisely deaf to these remarks, but they rankled in her mind several days.
One of the neighbors thought Mrs. Johnson was not a good housekeeper, because she had apple fritters for dinner, when there was ample time to make floating-island and even Charlotte Russe before that meal was served.
Yet with all this talk it was easy to see that the newly-adopted head of the household had completely identified herself with her family.
There are Americans who go to Europe, and after a short stay no longer regard the United States as a fit dwelling-place for civilized beings; who indulge themselves in the abuse of scenery, climate, customs and government of their own native land as freely as any hostile-minded foreigner. Therefore it is not strange that Northerners who come to live in the South should become attached to their surroundings, and even prefer them to all others which they ever knew.
Mrs. Johnson loved her stepchildren, Harry and Lucy. She taught them to call her ”aunt,” but their own mother could not have been more devoted to the children of the father who had lain down and died amidst the great conflict which was a horror to the whole country. Mrs. Johnson was greatly agitated by the war and its results, and as soon as possible after this cruel strife was over, she took Lucy with her on a visit to her Northern home, leaving Harry behind. Among the first letters sent back was the following, dated October 15th, 1867: