University of Virginia Library

7. CHAPTER VII.
LOG CABIN PHILOSOPHY.

That chamber — it was hall and chamber both — the whole
dwelling had but a single apartment — may have been sixteen
by twenty feet in size. It was of bare logs, the crevices filled
up by clay. Its rafters were naked to the eye. It had no loft
— no flooring above. The chimney was of clay, with its nozzle
scarce a foot lifted above the roof, the ends of which were thoroughly
begrimed by its smoke. Within, the aspect was wretchedly
poor, like the outside. In one corner stood the rude couch
of the aged widow, a rough stout frame of oak. The mattress was
of moss; old and worn, and in tatters, but still carefully preserved
and scrupulously clean, was the quilt spread over it — a
thing of shreds and patches. There was a shelf over the fireplace,
on which were ranged a dozen empty physic bottles, a
cup and bowl. A pine beaufit, without doors, exhibited a ridiculous
array of crockery, cups and saucers, plates and pitchers,
most of them fractured — few fit for use — relics of a past the
comforts of which they seemed to mock with their grinning and
broken edges. Two or three pewter spoons complete the inventory.
Opposite the bed in another corner, was the unwieldly
old fashioned loom. There were two spinning-wheels, three
chairs of oaken staves, covered with hides. And here you have
the whole catalogue. And there, alone and poor, lived this
aged woman; and she lived in safety. She had nothing with
which to tempt cupidity — she was not in the way to provoke
malice. As she herself said:—

“I have no husband, no son, to go out and find enemies, and

bring 'em home here with sword and fire! It's nothing that
one can rob me of. What can they get from me but an old
woman's curse instead of blessing? And what a fool he must
be that can come for that.”

Mother Ford was no bad philosopher. In her day she had
been a shrewd, sensible housewife — thrifty, careful, industrious,
energetic, but — poor always! We need not ask why, with
these virtues, she should be poor. It is enough that it is written
— the poor shall never die out of the land. And well for
man that it is so written! What a terrible condition of poverty
would prevail in a region where everybody is rich! What a
world of utter selfishness, and so of utter destitution!

Mother Ford did not repine because of her poverty. She was
a stern woman, somewhat, but very cheerful, nevertheless; with
rough manners, but a genial heart. A tall meagre frame of
seventy, perhaps; long, sallow, skinny face, deeply furrowed
by the plough of time; long, bony arms, still sinewy, and a
keen black eye still shining in her head.

While Nelly Floyd was flinging the brands upon the fire, the
old woman smoothed out her apron — white homespun over a
blue homespun frock — seated herself in a well-worn rocking-chair,
of domestic manufacture — a rude oaken frame, the seat
of which, a tightly stretched ox-hide, still showed some of the
hairs, unworn, along the edges. Here, while Nelly Floyd poured
forth her griefs, Mother Ford commenced a see-sawing motion,
which we have frequently observed to be a process among ancient
ladies, for bringing the mind to bear, with proper efficiency,
on some troublesome domestic problem. Her face told the
same story, of grave doubt and difficulty in the case; and might
have suggested some notions of severe censure yet to follow.
But never did listener receive intelligence with so patient an
ear, and with so few interruptions. She suffered Nelly to get
through the whole story of her griefs. Then, after a pause:—

“I'd be most mighty sorry, Nelly, ef Mat Floyd should come
to such harm as you speak of; though that's always a danger
from the sort of company he keeps. I dandled the boy upon
these knees when he was a baby in the lap; and I loved his
and your own poor mother, as ef she was my own sister. She's
an angel now in heaven, Nelly.”

The girl slipped down from her chair, and crept up silently
to the old woman, nestling close beside her as she listened.

“She was not the mother of Molly Floyd, you know. Ah!
that first wife of old Mat Floyd, was a different sort of creature.
Molly is mighty like her in everything; only she ain't got the
same sperrit. That first wife led your father a mighty miserable
sort of life; and kept his house, and himself too, pretty
much in hot water. 'Twa'n't no case of broken-heart for him,
I tell you, when she was carried out of his cabin foot foremost!
But he took warning by her temper; and when he looked out
for another wife, he got an angel — a little too much of an angel
— though I say it of your own father, Nelly, yet I have to say
it — a lettle too much of an angel for him. He never knowd
her valley, child, till he lost her; and then his conscience
troubled him, as he told me himself, for the hard words — ay,
Nelly, and the hard blows — that he gave her.”

“He didn't strike her, mother? No! no! don't tell me
that!”

“It's a sad truth, Nelly, but he did! But he was mighty repentant.
And he took on mightily after she was gone. She
died suddently, you know, jest like a flash. The doctors said
'twas disease of the heart; and you, and Mat, were the only
two children she had. Then Molly began to ill-use you both.
She was the oldest and the biggest, and she soon got to be sich
a ruler that there was no peace for you two. I don't know that
you can remember it. But I heard how things went, and that
made me bold to go to your father, and claim his last wife's
children. Your mother, you see, had as good as given you both
to me, and your father know'd it. But he worn't quite willing,
until he heard how Molly was a-beating you, and he couldn't
purtect you, for he was half the time in the woods or upon the
river. So he gin you both up to me, and we was all a-getting
on mighty well, for we was quite a happy family, and, in them
days, I had something to go upon. I worn't quite so bad off as
I am now. But, after a-while, your father got work someway
off, down south, and upon the salts, with a grand rich gentleman,
or, as they called him in those days, the old Landgrave — Landgrave
— what's the name?”

“Landgrave Nelson!”

“Yes, that's the name — Landgrave Nelson. Well, you see
your father got employment with him, and worked faithful; and
the landgrave took a liking to him; and he let on to the landgrave
about you two children; and, I reckon, did paint you
both up mighty fine — you in preticklar — for old Mat did think
a mighty great deal of you, Nelly, and said you was smart as a
flash and jest as bright. But it's nateral enough for a father to
think so of his own child, and the young one too; and so, the
old landgrave's wife — a mighty fine lady as ever I see — she
thought it a nice thing to get you to be a company for her own
darter — a good-natured child, and full of play —”

“Dear Bettie,” murmured Nelly, while a big round tear kept
swelling and swelling in her eye till it almost blinded her.

“Yes, Bettie was the child's name. So, once upon a time,
when they was a travelling out toward the Congarees — where
we was a-living then, to see some of their kin, and to buy some
fresh lands I reckon — they come, the landgrave and the lady
and Bettie — they all come together, in a grand coach and six,
with four outriders, in green and gold — and after a good deal
of palaver, to make me sensible of the good 'twas to do to you,
they carried you off. It was a hard pull upon my feelings,
Nelly, to make me give you up; and I cried bitter, I tell you,
when I seed the coach driving off; but I reasoned it out, and I
give in; but 'twas bitter, bitter, that day, Nelly, my child, for
you had got to be like my own; and ef I hadn't a-thought it
for your good, Nelly, no landgrave woman in the world should
have had you! No! I'd ha' died first! But she told me about
your education; and she said — what we all know'd — that you
was a mighty smart child — and she spoke of what ought to be
done for you, and what she could do; and her own little girl—”

“Bettie — dear little Bettie!”

“Yes, that was her name — she hung on to you, and would
have you git into the coach with her — and so the great lady
had it all her own way.”

“She was a good lady, mother.”

“Yes, I'm not a gainsaying that, Nelly, my child. She looked
good, and she put more than twenty guineas in my hand, for the
use of the boy, young Mat, and myself; and I reckon she meant
to do right. But what made her send you off, Nelly, when she

had raised you to be one of her own family, and made you
l'arned in books, and full of the onderstanding of strange things
that don't suit the poor people of our country?”

“She didn't send me off, mother. It was my own will. They
had to leave the state, mother, when the Revolution broke out,
for the landgrave wouldn't favor the patriots, and take up arms
against his king—”

“More fool he! What's a British king, that he should rule
here in America, I'd like to know? as if we couldn't make
our own kings, if we wanted them! But we don't want kings
at all, no more than the Jews in scripture. Kings is given as a
judgment. The landgrave might have stayed and kept his
own, and not let himself be driven out in his old age, and when
he was fixed so comfortable, like any prince on his estates.”

“But, mother, he could only have remained by joining the
patriots.”

“Well, and why couldn't he do that?”

“Perhaps he didn't think it right, mother” — but, lest this
argument should not avail with the old lady, she added quickly
— “and if he had done so, mother, he would have lost all, for,
you see, the king's soldiers are everywhere in possession of
everything.”

“That's true — that's true. The more's the pity, Nelly. I'm
sure I'm for the country, and them that lives in it, and works it,
and I don't see why we should have masters sent for us from
over the great water. Ah, Nelly, ef I had husband or son, I'd
have 'em fighting now, under the Swamp-Fox or the Game-Cock;
and it did vex me to the heart to find that Mat Floyd
had gone out, at the instigation of that old villain Rhodes, and
j'ined himself to the inimy. I'm afraid, Nelly, you had something
to do with that.”

“I'm afraid so too, mother.”

“And what made you speak for the British side, Nelly?
What had you to do with it, taking sides agin your own country?”

“Ah, mother, when I knew that Sherrod Nelson was an officer
of the British, I was afraid that Mat might some day be
called upon to fight with him, and that they might kill each
other!”

“You were a foolish child, Nelly. The chance wasn't one
in a thousand that they'd ever lift we'pon agin each other.”

“But there was one chance, mother, and I saw that. I didn't
wish Mat to go out at all.”

“He couldn't help it; he had to do it. Every man in Carolina,
that's able, has to go out, and lend a hand to the work, one
side or the other, as you see; and when that's the case, the safe
rule, and the right reason, is to stand up for the sile [soil] that
gives you bread. It was a great mistake, Nelly, and I'd give
a good deal ef I could make Mat break off from the Flurrida
riffigees, and j'ine himself to one of our parties — Marion or
Sumter, I don't care which — and make himself a free white
man agin, having the right onderstanding that freedom means
the right to stand up agin the world, in defence of one's own
sile.”

“Oh, mother, if I could get him away from all fighting—”

“But you kaint hope for that, Nelly, so long as there's an
inimy in the land. It's not the part of a man to skulk out of
sight till the country's free from all its inimies.”

“But oh, mother, I see what you don't see! I see him tied,
and dragged to the tree: I see him struggling to break away.
I see the strong men pulling him to death. I see him lifted up
in air, and all black in the face, with the horrid rope about his
neck.”

“Hev' you seen them signs agin, Nelly?” demanded the old
woman seriously.

“Yes, twice, thrice, have I seen it, in broad daylight, and
when I've been thinking of other things.”

“It's an awful, fearsome gift you hev', Nelly, and it's but
right that you should pray, all the time, to the great Lord that
rules above in heaven, to spare your sight from such dreadful
seeings. But, a'ter all, Nelly, it mout be only a sort of dreaming,
perhaps?”

“No, no, mother! it's when I'm awake, in the broad daylight,
that I have seen this and other dreadful spectacles.”

“I don't know. There's a sort of waking, Nelly, that's very
much like dreaming — when the eyes may be open, maybe, but
when the sight's looking innard, upon the troublesome thoughts
that's a-working in the brain. Now, Nelly, all your thoughts

and feelin's work more lively and active than with most other
people. You think at a flash, and feel, as I may say, like a
bird a-flying in the bright air. You're quick, mighty quick, in
these ways; and you talk sometimes, and sing out suddent, just
upon things that nobody else is talking or thinking about.”

“Is there anything strange in that, mother?” asked the girl
in low but earnest tones.

“Well, no — only it's a leetle different from the ways of
other people. It don't seem as if you considerated the folks
about you always — it's as if you forgot 'em sometimes, and
talked with yourself, or with some one that nobody else could
see, and about things that nobody else was a-thinking about.
That's the strangeness of it, Nelly.”

“And would you call that madness, mother — craziness?” in
very low, husky accents.

“Craziness? — madness? No! What makes you think
that?”

“Oh, mother—” with a burst of anguish — “that is the great
terror of my soul! It is, that I have the seeds of madness in
me! It is, that I talk dreams and nonsense, and persuade
myself that shadows are substances, and the merest fancies are
substantial things; that my brain is unsound; that — that — the
day may come when I shall rave — rave — perhaps do mischief;
and then, that they will chain my limbs, and bar me up in a horrid
dungeon with iron gratings to the windows; when I shall
never feel motion on the bright earth, and get no air, no light
from the blessed sun in heaven!”

And, sobbing wildly, the poor girl buried her face in the lap
of the aged woman.

“Why, Nelly, child, what's put all this nonsense-stuff in your
head?”

“Oh, mother, they call me mad already!”

“Who calls you mad?”

“Jeff Rhodes—”

“He's a beast, and a brute, and worse than a heathen Injin.
He'd as soon sculp you as call you mad. He's brute enough for
anything.”

“And Molly Rhodes says I'm light-headed.”

“And she's a pudding-head, with no more brains than a peck

of bran! She's a pretty piece of impudence, with such a thick
skull as she's got, to find fault with anybody's sense!”

“But Mat, too — even poor Mat, who really does love me —
even Mat thinks me foolish.”

“Mat, Mat! don't speak to me of Mat, and what he thinks,
Nelly. If he had anything in his own skull that a gimlet-bore
could git at, would he be sich a fool as to follow the track of
sich a raspscallion as Jeff Rhodes? What's the thinking of all
sich people to you? Now, tell me, did the great landgrave
think you crazy? Did he?”

“He never said so, mother.”

“Well, belike, he had not much to say to you, nor you to
him; but the lady landgrave, Madame Nelson — did she ever
let on that she thought you crazy, eh?”

“Never, never! oh, no — never!”

“And ef she had thought so, would she ever have kept you,
for seven good years and more, in companyship with her only
darter, and she an heiress to thousands? The thing's onreasonable.
And ef they never found you out to be mad, and I
never found you out to be mad, what's the valley of Jeff Rhodes's
thinking — the old gray-headed villain? — and what's the valley
of what Molly Rhodes thinks, the sap-headed sulk? — for she's
jest that; and, as for poor Mat — it's no use talking, Nelly, the
boy's foolish, and hain't got sense enough to stick to a right
idee. I'm sorry for him. I don't quarrel with him. I love
the boy, for I helped to raise him; but he's been pervarted
from all my raising; and now the chance is, that he's in a fair
road for all them horrid dangers that you see. None of these
people's to be valleyed for the matter of their thinking. You're
not so mad as the sensiblest among them; and you've got more
true human-natur sense, Nelly, than half the people that I
knows. For, what's the right reason? To do good; to love
them that spitefully uses you; to try always to make things
better for people, and people better for things; and to go through
the world planting fruits and flowers along the track, and pulling
up the thorns: and that, Nelly dear, is jest the thing — 'cording
to what I sees — that you've been a-doing, ever sence you was
knee-high. And it's in you, Nelly, to be doing so as long as
you kin go. You've got the heart for it. Call that craziness?

Lord, be marciful! but ef that's craziness, may the blessed Lord
change all our wise people into crazy people, in the twinkling
of an eye! That's my pray, this very night.”

Mother Ford's argument was probably quite as efficient as
that of the wisest moral philosopher could have been. It was
to the purpose — rough, but salient, practical, well-applied, and
impressive. The old woman continued:—

“One thing, Nelly dear — it's sart'in you're a very different
person from most of them you hev' to do with. You've got an
edication that puts you above them; and so, hafe the time, you're
a-talking to them strange and onreasonable things. For, you
know, them things that we don't know, and don't care nothing
about, are always onreasonable. And, then, you are strange,
besides, in your natur', Nelly; and that's bekaise you've got
strange gifts, Nelly. I ain't the person to deny the gifts that
you've got, Nelly; and though, sometimes, it does seem to me
as ef you was a-dreaming of what you tells me — of what you
see — of sperrits and angels — yet I would be a most impudent
old fool to be saying 'twan't so. I believe in sperrits, my child.
I don't see why sperrits kain't show themselves in our times,
as they did in the times of the heathens and the apostles. It's
for God to say; and ef he finds it needful to use sperrits, I
reckon he won't stop to ax us poor ignorant creatur's what we
thinks about it. I've never seen a sperrit myself, but I've hearn
strange things all about the house, at sart'in times of the year,
that's made the hair to rise on my forehead, as it did on Job's
forehead, that you read about in the blessed book. But my
mother had a gift like yourn, Nelly.”

“And did she ever see?”

“Yes, more than once! I remember, once upon a time, when
I was with her, and me only a little child, I had a sort of sight-gift
my own self, but 'twas only that once. We were living on
the Santee, that time, and my father had a little property
there. One day, a strange gentleman, named Sylvester, came
to see him about running some land [surveying for entry]; and
mother called me out of the room, leaving the two men together.
We walked out to the kitchen, and off to the stables; and, as
we turned down a lane behind the stables, we seed father, plain
enough, a-walking by himself. Mother called out to him, but

he made no answer. He kept on, crossed the lane, and went
out of sight into the woods. We went back home, and there
found father and Mr. Sylvester, a-setting together, jest where
we had left them. Then mother ups, and says —

“`Why, how did you git back before us?'

“`Git back?' says father; `I hain't been away from this
fireside.'

“Mother then tells him what she seed, and what I seed.

“`I called to you,' she said, `and you went into the woods
without a word.'

“`It's my appairation,' said my father — I remember them's
the very words — and he went on to say, `It's a sign I'm not
to live long.'

“And, sure enough, though jest then a most hearty person,
without an ache or a complaint, he died of pleurisy in less than
three months a'ter. I remember another mighty strange thing,
Nelly, that happened to mother when I was a child, not more
than nine years old. There was a poor, young widow woman,
named Rachel Moore, that died on the Santee, near us, and left
a little girl, quite onbefriended, about seven years old. My
mother took the poor little orphin home with her a'ter the funeral,
and did for her jest the same as she did for me. And we
had her with us more than a year, when, all of a suddent, there
come an uncle up from the salts [seaside], and claimed her,
and took little Rachel off to live with his own family. We
missed the child very much, and only two days a'ter, when we
was walking in the garden, there came up a sudden shower,
though we couldn't see a single cloud in the sky.

“`It's a-raining,' said my mother; but I felt none of the rain,
and it stopped as suddent as it began; and, a minute after,
mother said:—

“`Why, child, you're all sprinkled with blood! — and so
am I!'

“She went on, as she seed the same bloody spots all over her
own frock, as they were on mine. Then she said:—

“`I see it all. Something's happened to poor little Rachel
Moore!'

“And so 'twas, sure enough. When we heard of the child,
she was dead — was thrown out of the shay and killed, from

the horses running away, when her uncle was a-driving her —
the very day and hour when the shower of blood rained on us!
And that was a fact, Nelly, knowin' to my own self. And I
could tell you hundreds more. But, child, ain't it high time
for us to lie down? Fling on another lightwood knot. I'm
a-feeling quite chilly, and we shall be in the dark in another
minute.”