Democratic Sentinel, Volume 16, Number 22, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 June 1892 — Delicately Brought Up. [ARTICLE]

Delicately Brought Up.

“I didn’t even know how to put on my own stockings,” said an aged Virginia lady to a Boston Globe man, “until I was 12 years. People at the North, and especially those of the younger generations, have no idea how thoroughly dependent the women of the South were upon their slaves. We allowed ourselves to he waited upon as if we were helpless infants. When I was a girl if I wished a drink of water some one poured it out and held the glass to my lips while I drank. If I wished my chair moved, even a foot, I rose up and said so and some one sprang to move it. If I attempted to do the slightest thing for myself, which J rarely did, there would he a remonstrance from the colored girls: “ ‘Now. Miss Fanny, yo’ no need do dat. Yo’ father got plenty us niggers with nuffln else to ’tend to.’ “When I look back upon it now I wonder sometimes that it did not make us imbeciles. When I was 12 years old I went to a convent school near Baltimore. My mother brought my maid with her, and she saw me safely in bed. But the rule of the institution forbade any pupil to have a maid, and the girl went home that night with my mother. Next morning, some time after the rising hell rang, one of the sisters appeared at my door. “ ‘lt is time now for you to get up,’ said she. “ -But I can't get up,’ I replied. “ ‘My dear child,’ said she, ‘are you ill?’ “ ‘Why, no,’ said I, ‘but no one has come to raise me up and put on my stockings.’ “She actually had to show me how to put on my stockings, and then my slippers. Further, it required some persuasion on her part before I could lift the pitcher and pour out the water to wash myself, and so on, until I was ready to go downstairs. Now this was not ill-will, you tunderstand, but childish ignorance. I had never done any of these things for myself, and didn’t know how.”