The story of my life ; or, The sunshine and shadow of seventy years / by Mary A. Livermore ... with hitherto unrecorded incidents and recollections of three years' experience as an army nurse in the great Civil War, and reminiscences of twenty-five years' experiences on the lecture platform ... to which is added six of her most popular lectures ... with portraits and one hundred and twenty engravings from designs by eminent artists ...

DICK'S WRATH AT A " SASSY" NIGGER.

183

haughtily. "In the South we don't 'low niggers to sass
white folks. Pete's mad 'cause I hain't been huntin' to-day,
an' tells how I've been loafin' an' foolin'."
"But if Peter has done wrong, you should report him to
your father, and not punish him yourself. You are only a
boy, Dick."
" Lor' me!" said Dick in surprise. " Pa'd la'af at that.
Why, Jim licks his black Jeff like blazes, when Jeff don't
do nothin', an' Pa never meddles. You haf t' lick niggers,
or they'd run over you. You don't know the South yit."
I agreed with.him; I did not know the South, but I was
in a fair way to learn. We were rid of the gunning to-day,
and trouble had come of it. I promised myself, that hereafter, I would be rid of the negroes when I had the children
in charge.
The lumbering old carriage was decorated like the children, with red berries, bright leaves, green moss, and other
aftermath of the late autumn, and the servants in the rear
carried boughs of green holly, glowing with brilliant red
berries. As we wound through the woods, and wabbled
through the humpy tobacco fields and newly cleared land,
bristling with charred stumps, the negroes of the company
began to sing, and the children joined in the chorus:
"An' I hope to gain de promis' lan',
Glory, Hallelujah!
Whar de Lawd my Saviour stan',
Glory, Hallelujah!
Whar de mawnin's allers fair,
Glory; Hallelujah!
Whar dar's music in de air,
Glory, Hallelujah!"
The field servants were swarming from the tobacco
houses and corn barns as we drove past, for they had been
working there under the supervision of the overseer.' But