Wichita eagle., 1888-09-26
ON A KENTUCKY FARM.

Associations Of Ante-Bellum Doyhood.
Nanny" the Cook. ''Uncle Tom"
The typical boy on q Kentucky farm
was tenderly associated from infancy with
the negroes of the household and the
fields. His old black NANNY became
almost his first mother and was but
slowly crowded out of his conscience and
his heart by the growing image Of the
true one. She had perhaps nursed him
at her bosom when he WAS not long
enough to stretch across it, sung over his
cradle at noon and at midnight, taken
him out upon the velvety grass beneath
the shade of the elm trees to watch his
first manly resolution Of standing alone
in the world and walking the vast dis
lance OF some inches. Often in boyish
years when flying from the house with
q loud appeal from the incomprehensible
code of Anglo-Saxon punishment for
small misdemeanors he had run to those
black arms and cried himself 10 sleep in
the lap Of African sympathy. AS he
grew older, alas! his first love grew faith
| less, and while nanny was good
enough in her way and sphere his wander
ing affections settled humbly at the feet
of another great functionary Of the house
hold-the cook in the kitchen. To him
her keys were as the keys to the kingdom
Of heaven for his immortal soul was his
immortal appetite. When he stood by
the biscuit bench while she, pausing amid
the varied industries that went into the
preparation Of an old time Kentucky
supper, made him marvellous geese OF
dough, with farinaceous feathers and
genuine coffee grains for eyes, there was
to him no other artist in the world who
possessed the secret Of so oommingling
the useful with the beautiful.
The little half naked imps, too, playing
in the dirt Ike glossy blackbirds taking a
bath of dust, were his sweetest-because,
perhaps, NEUTRALITY-SUSPICIOUS.. With
them he went clandestinely to the fatal
duck pond in the stable lot, to learn the
art Of swimming on a walnut rail With
them he raced up and down the lane on
blooded alder stalk horses, afterward
leading the exhausted coursers into stables
of the same green bushes and haltering
them high with cotton string. 1t was
one of these hatless children of original
Guinea that had crept up to him as he lay
asleep in the summer grass and told him
where the best hidden of all nests was to
be found III q far fence corner-that of
the high tempered, scolding guinea hen.
To them he showed his first Barlow knife;
for them he blew his first home made
whistle. He is their petty tyrant today;
tomorrow he will be their repentsnt
fi1end, dividing with them his marbles
and proposing game of hop scotch.
Upon his dialect, his disposition, his
whole character, is laid the inefTaceable
impress of theirs, so that they pass into
the final reckoning up Of his life here and
in the world to come.
But Uncle Tom-the negro overseer Of
the place-the greatest Of al the negroes
greater even than the cook, when one
is not hungry. How often has he strad-
died Uncle Toms neck, or ridden behind
him afield on n barebccked horse to the
jingling mUsic Of the trace chainsl 1t is
Uncle Tom who brings him his first young
squirrel to tame the teeth of which are
soon TO be planted in his right foretinger.
Many time he slips out of the house to
with Uncle Tom; and during long winter
evenings he loves to sit before those great
roaring cabin fireplaces that throw their
red and yellow lights over the half circle
of black faces and on the mysteries of
broom making, chair bottoming and the
cObbling of shoes. Like the child who
listens to Uncle Remus." he too hears
songs ard stories, and creeps back to the
house with a wondering look in his eyes
and a vague hush of spirit.-James Lane
Allen in The Century.