The age-herald., 1900-09-18
WoMAING;c;;r IGcrRrv


 press. there is none who is meeting with greater success than Miss Alma Ritten- berry of Birmingham, whose clever sketches of the South are now special feature of the Chicago Evening Post. Miss Rittenberry has frequently contributed to the Birmingham dailies and that in her newspaper work she is reaching broader fields and meeting with success will be matter of great pleasure to her numerous friends in Birmingham
 In a recent edition of the Evening Post Miss Rittenberry writes the following clever little sketch upon the passing of the old plantation home:
 Time destroys some things but beautifies others. The house on the old plantation that stood stately and white, with great chimneys, quaint gables and wide veran- das, has fallen with the flight of years into a picturesque neglect which gives 1t an indefinable air of mystery and romance. This is heightened by the dense shadows of the sturdy oaks, shady naples, great, dropping elms, ash and tall poplars, inter- spersed with magnolias, spruce and hem lock. while underfoot the grass grows tall, with now and then patches of pennyroyal
 
 on the low south wind. The gardens wear a look of riotous luxuriance with their beds of lilies, poppies, peonies and verbe- mas vieing with each other in hue and growth. Breaking through their border of mignonette and violet they have but faint trace of the master hand that trained them with so much artistic care myrtle, mimosa, roses and honeysuckes that grow dark and close in the neglected shrubbery, like the old trells work of a mothers love in the background of life that has run to weeds.
 The glass in the hothouse Is broken and the summer house is almost hidden from view by the rankness of wisteria and clematis vines that have been allowed to run at will. The old plantation is today ruined landmark on fading historic landscape
 The front door opens into a grand hall, large oblong room with grand stairway ana all immense fireplace with wonder full mantlepiece Of wood cut with images of fairies or some other kind of women pelting Cupid with roses. There are other strangely carved mantlepieces in the house. The spiders have curtaned the
  their meshes sunbeams steal and play on the polished floors. And from every nook and corner of the old house come silent memories, memories of master and slave and of their devoted friendship, that pure flame of love which can never again shine out in the ruture between the two races.''
 Tn the drowsy quietude of this shadowy paradise there falls my ear voice as melodious as the babble of distant waters -the voice of nanny" nanny" who did her best for the moral and religious training of those under her care. In these after years in recalling the events of our childhood we seldom think of any but the pleasant and happy. One that always touches a tender spot in our memory is "mammy's" bedtime songs--"mammy," sit- ting in the old f1at-bottomed chair, gently rocking in the shadows of the flickering freight, while she sings some sweet, pa- thetic hymn, some sad refrain pertaining were the stories, weird, mysterious anu full of superstition and impossiblities that we children loved Sometimes "mammy'' would follow her own inclination and re- late tales of the past, in which she would portray in wonderful delineation the fam fly pride and dgnity-the balls and wed- dings, with their pomp and ceremony. In all of these nanny was an important and conspicuous figure.
 Near the big house is the quarter with its two rows ot cabins where the slaves lived ir. comfort Here are the quaint and oft times picturesque buildings against background of dark green, with the blue of southern sky hanging over them. Many of the cabins are well-built little A few are of clay and brick. Some are plastered, and many have weli-made chim- neys of brick. The roofs are covered with old. round-end cypress shingles and tufted thick With vines of such rich tints as art ists delight in. These cabins have from two to four rooms each and every room Is furnished with a well-made fireplace the mantel of which is invariably painted black because of the smoke from wood fires. The doors, mostly paneled, have latches, big hand-wrought things for big hands to grasp. Some have stairs, others only step- ladders.
 A few of the old darkies still cling to the old plantation, though it Is divided and in many hands. They insist on continuing as tenants of the plantation on which they first had local habitation and name But the old planta tion, with it's broad acres and stately white house, has, with few ex- captions, passed into the hands of the stranger or lies barren, unfenced waste, with darkened rooms and noiseless halls,'. and with the little cabins empty; some ui u Ashn of al1