ed you) for twenty-five years? Mammy Lou has belonged to us just like father and mother ever since we've been at housekeeping, an

k great pleasure in watching them and writing it all out, for I could always imagine it was me that was

either Marse Shakespeare or Marse Solomon said a old fool was the biggest fool a

e nicest kind of things for her to take to picnics, hoping to help her catch him in a motherly way. But when he started to promising to give Dilsey a rocking-chair and take her to "George Washington" if sh

ime she got married. Mammy Lou is a smart old thing, and so she talked to him until he said, well, he would just as soon marry her as Dilsey, if she would stop cooking for us, and cook for him and iron his shirts all the time. She promised him she would do this, like people always do when they're trying to marry a person, although it looks

to keep Bill from getting "a holt" of it. She said she wouldn't trust any white Yankee with a half a dollar that she ever saw, much less a coffee-colored one. Mother was so mad at her, and so troubled abou

ge Washington!" mammy said in a

ok time to ask, thinking mammy would know sh

wife lives. Mr. Williams is mighty well acquainted with the president and says he's shore I could git a job

med mighty sad at the notion of leaving us, but was so delighted at the idea of marrying a young man (as anybody naturally would be) that she couldn't think of giving that up. Pretty soo

them like Isaac (I don't know of any special way that Isaac was born, but two of mammy's husbands have been preachers, so she knows what she's talking about) they let me keep the bottle to humor me. It had a long rubber thing to it so I would find it more convenient. Mammy said the old muley c

draw anything up through the rubber, being all clabbered, I'd begin to cry and run with my bottle to mammy. And she would quiet me by digging out all the clabber with a little twig and f

going off to Washington where the people are too stylish to keep a muley cow. They won't

Young went, being still down there and a great pleasure to us all. They were delighted, being raised up North, and wanted to take pictures of everything. Whenever we would pass a cabin door with a nigger and his guit

ould have heard the pop up to the big house and said she would show him how to be impudent to a woman of sixty, even if he was a Yankee and educated. Everybody passed it off as a joke, but the slap didn't seem to set very

a they use, and although it was the sixth marriage of my old nurse, which you don't get a chance to s

natural and lifelike from the kitchen I thought surely it must be a dream, mammy being hundreds of miles away

Me-shach,

washed me w

ou were nearly starved. I didn't ask any questions, but just said, "Mammy," and she said, "Baby," and there I was hugging her fit to turn over the churn. I asked her if mother knew that she come back and she said no, she had been easy and not made any noise, so as to surprise us all. I reckon mother and father are

her asked her if she wasn't still married, and she said no, for she had "had occasion to give that uppish Yankee nigger a good whippin' las' night." And then she went on t

o the big yellow bowl which she was going to scramble for breakfast, and as she commenced telling us about her marrying troubles she began to beat them very hard, which see

y then asked him if he had been born a fool or just turned that way since he had married so far above his station. He said he would mighty soon find out who the fool was in that family-and she better have good beaten biscuits to go with the steak. When he said this mammy gave him another sample of her strength like she did in the church and told him to

slipper, which was large and easy to come off. This broke a good half of his front tooth, she said, besides drawing a lot of blood to relieve her feelings. While he was busy wiping away the blood and trying to open his eyes enough to see candle-light again, mammy sat down by him, and, before he knew it, she had dragged him across her lap and was paddling him like he was her own dear son instead of her h

u said, well, Marse Sheriff might arrest her and Marse Judge might fine her, but she would see them all in the pl

o wake up Bertha (but not the baby) for breakfast, and Ma

sizzled, "I done bought a hundred dollars' worth o' divorces already, and if the l