About a dozen families of
liberated slaves were among the number, and they became my favorite
resort in cases of emergency. If anybody wishes to have a black face
look handsome, let them be left, as I have been, in feeble health in
oppressive hot weather, with a sick baby in arms, and two or three
other little ones in the nursery, and not a servant in the whole house
to do a single turn. Then, if they could see my good old Aunt Frankie
coming with her honest, bluff, black face, her long, strong arms, her
chest as big and stout as a barrel, and her hilarious, hearty laugh,
perfectly delighted to take one's washing and do it at a fair price,
they would appreciate the beauty of black people.
My cook, poor Eliza Buck,--how she would stare to think of her name
going to England!--was a regular epitome of slave life in herself;
fat, gentle, easy, loving and lovable, always calling my very modest
house and door-yard "The Place," as if it had been a plantation with
seven hundred hands on it. She had lived through the whole sad story
of a Virginia-raised slave's life. In her youth she must have been a
very handsome mulatto girl. Her voice was sweet, and her manners
refined and agreeable. She was raised in a good family as a nurse and
seamstress. When the family became embarrassed, she was suddenly sold
on to a plantation in Louisiana. She has often told me how, without
any warning, she was suddenly forced into a carriage, and saw her
little mistress screaming and stretching her arms from the window
towards her as she was driven away.
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