Democratic Sentinel, Volume 15, Number 44, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 November 1891 — On a Plantation. [ARTICLE]

On a Plantation.

“You can live very well on a plantation,” writes Octave Thanet, in the Atlantic Monthly, “if, as the negroes say, ‘you understand yourself.’” It is evident, however, that in Arkansas, as elsewhere, those who are themselves energetic and thrifty have much to “put up with” in their dealings with their dependents and neighbors, too many of whom are given to “a patient endurance of avoid/ole evils.” “As an illustration of plantation methods and Arkansas character,” says the writer, “we always remember our cow-shed.” The plantation carpenter being too busy with houses to condescend to cow-sheds, we appealed to Thomas Jefferson Pope, who is indifferently carpenter, blacksmith, wood-sawyer, butcher, or tinker, and between whiles makes a crop. Thomas Jefferson is amiability itself; he said he would build a shed for us “jest too quick. ” The interview was on Thursday. Friday it rained. Saturday was “pigkilling day.” Sunday, of course, we could not expect him, but we were comforted to know that he was “studying ’bout” us. Monday he appeared in person with a “helper”—it always takes two men to do anything in the South, if it be no more than mending a fence —and they looked at tha yard and talked together for an hour. Tuesday he came again, and carried off our best hatchet. Wednesday he really set to work, and worked steadily, effectively, and, according to plantation standards, rapidly, until the shed was complete save the doors. Then he was called away to make a He said, very justly, that cows could wait be titer than “co’pses,” and as soon as he “got Gather Robinson’s coffin done he would fix our doors jest too quick.” I trust that he was not two months making the coffin, but twomonthsdid we wait doorless; meanwhile Albert nailed the cows in every night and unnailed them every morning. We came South three helpless women, accustomed to have men open the doors for us. One of us had a pretty conceit of her artistic cookery; and yet we were obliged to send for an old black woman to show our Northern cook—and us—how to make bread without compressed yeast. Now, thanks to Amy, our present waitress, from the North, we are accomplished paper-hangers, and thanks to Christine, our cook, also from the North, we can spread whitewash artfully over our fences and out-build-ings. Indeed, should need come—and need, like a good neighbor, drops in without formality—we can show a variety of handicrafts. Constance is a good machinist mending the broken locks and lamps; Madonna, who is the carpenter, makes beautiful furniture out of packing-boxes and cretonne. We are our own best glaziers, and once we built up a demoralized chimney with old bricks and an improvised mortar of sand and whitewash.