Categories
1860s African American Fable Flowers Short Story

The Mission of the Flowers

The Mission of the Flowers

By Frances E. Watkins
Annotations by Rene Marzuk
Illustration from the cover of How to Grow Roses, thirteenth edition, 1920, published by The Conard & Jones Co.

In a lovely garden filled with fair and blooming flowers stood a beautiful rose tree.[1] It was the centre of attraction and won the admiration of every eye; its beauteous flowers were sought to adorn the bridal wreath and deck the funeral bier. It was a thing of joy and beauty, and its earth mission was a blessing. Kind hands plucked its flowers to gladden the chamber of sickness and adorn the prisoner’s lonely cell. Young girls wore them ’mid their clustering curls, and grave brows relaxed when they gazed upon their wondrous beauty.—Now the rose was very kind and generous hearted, and seeing how much joy she dispensed wished that every flower could only be a rose and like herself have the privilege of giving joy to the children of men; and while she thus mused a bright and lovely spirit approached her and said, “I know thy wishes and will grant thy desires.—Thou shall have power to change every flower in the garden to thine own likeness. When the soft winds come wooing thy fairest buds and flowers, thou shalt breathe gently on thy sister plants, and beneath thy influence they shall change to beautiful roses.” The rose tree bowed her head in silent gratitude to the gentle being who had granted her this wondrous power. All night the stars bent over her from their holy homes above, but she scarcely heeded their vigils. The gentle dews nestled in her arms and kissed the cheeks of her daughters; but she hardly noticed them;—she was waiting for the soft airs to awaken and seek her charming abode. At length the gentle airs greeted her and she hailed them with a joyous welcome, and then commenced her work of change. The first object that met her vision was a tulip superbly arrayed in scarlet and gold. When she was aware of the intention

Ellen T. Fisher. Tulips. Color Chromolithograph, ca. 1861-1897, Boston Public Library. Public Domain.

of her neighbor her cheeks flamed with anger, her eyes flashed indignantly, and she haughtily refused to change her proud robes for the garb the rose tree had prepared for her, but she could not resist the spell that was upon her. And she passively permitted the garments of the rose to enfold her yielding limbs.—The verbenas saw the change that had fallen upon the tulip, and dreading that a similar fate awaited them crept closely to the ground, and while tears gathered in their eyes, they felt a change pass through their sensitive frames, and instead of gentle verbenas they were blushing roses. She breathed upon the sleepy poppies; a deeper slumber fell upon their senses, and when they awoke, they too had changed to bright and beautiful roses. The heliotrope read her fate in the lot of her sisters, and bowing her fair head in silent sorrow, gracefully submitted to her unwelcome destiny. The violets, whose mission was to herald the approach, were averse to losing their individuality. Surely, said they, we have a mission as well as the rose;

Ellen T. Fisher. Poppies No. 3. Color Chromolithograph, c. 1886, Boston Public Library. Public Domain

but with heavy hearts they saw themselves changed like their sister plants. The snow drop drew around her her robes of virgin white; she would not willingly exchange them for the most brilliant attire that ever decked a flower’s form; to her they were the emblems of purity and innocence; but the rose tree breathed upon her, and with a bitter sob she reluctantly consented to the change. The dahlias lifted their heads proudly and defiantly; they dreaded the change but scorned submission; they loved the fading year, and wished to spread around his dying couch their brightest, fairest flowers; but vainly they struggled, the doom was upon them, and they could not escape. A modest lily that grew near the rose tree shrank instinctively from her; but it was in vain, and with tearful eyes and trembling lips she yielded, while a quiver of agony convulsed her frame. The marygolds sighed submissively and made no remonstrance. The garden pinks grew careless and submitted without a murmur; while other flowers less fragrant or less

Auguste Schmidt. Floral Arrangement with Violets. Color chromolithograph, ca. 1861-1897, Boston Public Library. Public Domain.

fair paled with sorrow or reddened with anger, but the spell of the rose tree was upon them and every flower was changed by her power, and that once beautiful garden was overrun with roses; it had become a perfect wilderness of roses; the garden had changed, but that variety which had lent it so much beauty was gone, and men grew tired of the roses, for they were everywhere. The smallest violet peeping faintly from its bed would have been welcome, the humblest primrose would have been hailed with delight;—even a dandelion would have been a harbinger of joy, and when the rose saw that the children of men were dissatisfied with the change

Ellen T. Fisher. Marigolds. Color chromolithograph, ca. 1861-1897, Boston Public Library. Public Domain.

she had made, her heart grew sad within her, and she wished the power had never been given her to change her sister plants to roses, and tears come into her eyes as she mused, when suddenly a rough wind shook her drooping form and she opened her eyes and found that she had only been dreaming. But an important lessons had been taught; she had learned to respect the individuality of her sister flowers and began to see that they, as well as herself, had their own missions,—some to gladden the eye with their loveliness and thrill the soul with delight; some to transmit fragrance to the air; others to breathe a refining influence upon the world; some had power to lull the aching brow and soothe the weary heart and brain into forgetfulness, and of those whose mission she did not understand she wisely concluded there must be some object in their creation, and resolved to be true to her own earth mission and lay her fairest buds and flowers upon the altars of love and truth.

WATKINS, FRANCES E. “THE MISSION OF THE FLOWERS.” REPOSITORY OF RELIGION AND LITERATURE, AND OF SCIENCE AND ART’S VOL. III, NO. 1 (JANUARY 1860): 26-8.

[1] A Tree Rose or Rose Standard is not a rose variety, but the result of grafting a regular rose plant onto a trunk to achieve the appearance of a tree.

Verbena (Verbena chamaedrifolia), from the Flowers series for Old Judge Cigarettes. Commercial color lithograph, 1890, printed by George S. Harris & Sons, Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Heliotrope (Heliotropium Peruvianum), from the Flowers series for Old Judge Cigarettes. Commercial color lithograph, 1890, printed by George S. Harris & Sons, Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Snowdrop (Galanthus Nivalis), from the Flowers series for Old Judge Cigarettes. Commercial color lithograph, 1890, printed by George S. Harris & Sons, Metropolitan Museum of Art. Public Domain.
Lily of the Valley (Convallaria Majalis), from the Flowers series for Old Judge Cigarettes. Commercial color lithograph, 1890, printed by George S. Harris & Sons, Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Dahlia (Dahlia Coccinea), from the Flowers series for Old Judge Cigarettes. Commercial color lithograph, 1890, printed by George S. Harris & Sons, Metropolitan Museum of Art. Public Domain.
Pinks (Dianthus Caryophyllus), from the Flowers series for Old Judge Cigarettes. Commercial color lithograph, 1890, printed by George S. Harris & Sons, Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Primrose (Primula Vulgaris), from the Flowers series for Old Judge Cigarettes. Commercial color lithograph, 1890, printed by George S. Harris & Sons, Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Contexts

Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (1825-1911) was an African American public speaker, poet, teacher, and social activist. As a public intellectual, she advocated for antislavery, education, and temperance. Her short story “The Two Offers,” which appeared in 1859 in consecutive issues of The Anglo-African Magazine, is the first short story published by an African American writer in the United States.

The Repository of Religion and Literature, and of Science and Arts was a short-lived (1858-63) quarterly for Black children published by a group of African Methodist Episcopal (AME) societies.

Definitions from Oxford English Dictionary:

emblem: A picture of an object (or the object itself) serving as a symbolical representation of an abstract quality, an action, state of things, class of persons, etc.

beauteous: Highly pleasing to the senses, esp. the sight; beautiful; (also, in recent use) sensuously alluring, voluptuous. Chiefly literary.

bier: The movable stand on which a corpse, whether in a coffin or not, is placed before burial; that on which it is carried to the grave.

vigil: An occasion or period of keeping awake for some special reason or purpose; a watch kept during the natural time for sleep.

Resources for Further Study
  • Tabitha Lowery’s scholarly essay “‘Thank God for Little Children’: The Reception History of Frances E. W. Harper’s Children’s Poetry,” included in volume 67, number 2, of ESQ: A Journal of Nineteenth-Century American Literature and Culture (2021).
  • The house where Frances Ellen Watkins Harper lived in Philadelphia, PA, from 1870 until 1911 is a National Historic Landmark.
  • Ian Zack’s article “Overlooked No More: Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Poet and Suffragist,” appeared on February 7th, 2023 in The New York Times.
Contemporary Connections

How to Increase Biodiversity in Your Backyard and Garden,” from the Dogwood Alliance’s website.

Categories
1910s African American Fable Folktale Short Story Wild animals

The Hare and the Tortoise

The Hare and the Tortoise

By Anonymous
Annotations by Rene Marzuk
John T. Bowen. Texian Hare. Hand-colored lithograph on wove paper, 1848, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, The Bayou Bend Collection, gift of Mr. and Mrs. Robert D. Jameson. Public domain.

(Original byline: A Negro fairy Folk-Tale From Uganda. Selected by M. N. Work.)[1]

The hare and the tortoise were great friends. One day they decided to search for food. They went to an ant hill and dug a hole in it so as to trap the ants. The next day, as the time drew near for them to visit the hole, the hare said, “Why should an old fool like the tortoise share this feast with me? I can easily outwit him.” So he told his friends to wait in a quiet place for the tortoise and when he came by to seize him and carry him into the tall grass through which he would have great difficulty in pushing his way. His friends did as he requested. They waited and as the tortoise came by they caught him and carried him into the tall grass. In the meantime the hare ate all the ants he wanted and scampered off home.

The tortoise, after a long struggle, managed to get out of the grass. Tired and vexed he made his way to the ant hill, but found no food. He saw there, however, the footprints of the hare, and as it flashed upon him that he had been outwitted, he became angry and said, “Never mind, my cunning friend, I will get even with you for this.”

When he reached home the hare rushed out to meet him and said. “How thankful I am to see you safe. I feared you were killed. I only escaped myself by the merest chance. Three spears just missed me. We must never go back to that ant hill.”

“Have no fear”, said the tortoise. “Our enemies are not likely to come to the same spot again. It will be quite safe for us to go there another day.”

The tortoise, knowing that the selfish hare would sneak off alone to feast on the ants, arranged with his friends to catch the hare when he was busy eating. “Wait for him”, said the tortoise, “and when he has his head deep in the hole pounce upon him, but,” he added, “do not kill him.”

“Oh” said the friends, “we like hare’s meat; we want to eat him.”

“Very well”, said the tortoise, “but if you kill him quickly he will be tough. You must take him home, then make a pot ready half filled with fine oil and salt. Put the hare in the pot leaving a hole in the cover so that you may add cold water from time to time, for if you let the oil get hot you will completely spoil the hare. Be very careful, therefore, not to let it boil.”

The friends did exactly as they were told. They trapped the hare and carried him home. Then they put him in a pot with the best of oil, the proper amount of salt and placed the pot on the fire. Water was added occasionally through the hole made in the cover. After some hours, when all was thought to be ready, the friends, having washed their hands and nicely laid out the dishes, seated themselves expectantly. The pot was placed in their midst and the cover was withdrawn when hoy! presto! out jumped the hare, and to their horror, ran away. As he rushed into his house he found his comrade waiting.

“Dear me” said the tortoise, “Where have you been?”

“Alas! said the hare, “I have been in great danger. I nearly lost my life. I’ve been caught and cooked. It was only by a miracle that I escaped.”

As he said this he began to lick himself. The tortoise, noticing that a look of pleasure rapidly succeeded that of fright, went across to him and also began to lick.

“How delicious”, said he.

“Get away”, said the greedy hare. “You have not been in the pot or through all the trials I’ve been through. Keep off.”

The tortoise, feeling that his cunning had supplied the oil and salt, began to get angry.

“Let me have your shoulder and left side to lick?”

“I will not”, said the hare, more and more enjoying himself.

The tortoise, in great fury, left the house. He had not gone far before he met his angry friends coming to meet him

“What do you mean”? they asked.

“Through your advice we have lost not only the hare, but also our fine oil and salt. When we uncovered the pot the hare jumped out and ran off with the oil and salt all clinging to him.”

The tortoise, in his rage, lost every feeling of friendship for the hare and said, “I will tell you what to do. You arrange a dance and invite the hare and when he is dancing to your tom-tom seize him and this time kill him.”

The dance was arranged. The hare was invited and came. While he was dancing the friends suddenly seized him. To make sure that he would not escape this time they killed him, skinned him and cut him up.

Thus the hare, and because for once, was outwitted of his greediness, miserably perished.

John Anderson (Scottish naturalist). Burmese Roofed Turtle. Hand-painted illustration, 1873, University of St Andrews, Scotland. Public domain.
 “THE HARE AND THE TORTOISE.” THE CRISIS’ VOL. 12, NO. 6 (OCTOBER 1916): 271-72.

[1] In October of 1912, The Crisis published a nearly identical version of this short story: “Mr. Hare: A Story for Children.” The ending of the current version, selected by Monroe Nathan Work and published four years later in the same magazine, during World War I, is significantly less coddling than that of the 1912 version. While the 1916 hare dies, the one from 1912 survives the tortoise’s revenge. 

Contexts

Starting in 1912, the October issues of The Crisis, the official magazine of the NAACP, were dedicated to children. A typical edition of these children’s numbers would contain a special editorial piece and two or three literary works specifically for children, while still including the serious pieces about contemporary issues with a focus on race that The Crisis was known for. These October numbers were sprinkled with children’s photographs sent in by the readers.

In his first editorial for the Children’s number in 1912, W. E. B. Du Bois wrote that “there is a sense in which all numbers and all words of a magazine of ideas myst point to the child—to that vast immortality and wide sweep and infinite possibility which the child represents.”

The success of The Crisis’ children’s number led to the standalone The Brownies’ Book, a monthly magazine for African American children that circulated from January 1920 to December 1921 under the editorship of Du Bois, Augustus Granville Dill, and Jessie Fauset.

Categories
1840s Family Food Short Story

The Strawberry Woman

The Strawberry Woman

By T. S. Arthur
Annotations by Josh benjamin
Francis Wheatley. Strawberries, Scarlet Strawberries, Plate 9 from The Cries of London.
Stipple engraving in brown, with hand-colored additions, on cream wove paper, 1799. The
Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, I.L.

“Strawb’rees! Strawb’rees!” cried a poorly clad, tired-looking woman, about eleven o’clock, one sultry June morning. She was passing a handsome house in Walnut street, into the windows of which she looked earnestly, in the hope of seeing the face of a customer. She did not look in vain, for the shrill sound of her voice brought forward a lady, dressed in a silk mourning wrapper, who beckoned her to stop. The woman lifted the heavy tray from her head, and placing it upon the doorstep, sat wearily down.

“What’s the price of your strawberries?” asked the lady as she came to the door.

“Ten cents a box, madam. They’re right fresh.”

“Ten cents!” replied the lady in a tone of surprise, drawing herself up and looking grave. Then shaking her head, and compressing her lips firmly, she added—

“I can’t give ten cents for strawberries. It’s too much. I’ll give you forty cents for five quarts, and nothing more.”

“But madam, they cost me within a trifle of eight cents a quart.”

“I can’t help that. You paid too much for them, and this must be your loss not mine, if I buy your strawberries. I never pay for other people’s mistakes. I understand the use of money much better than that.”

The poor woman did not feel very well. The day was unusually hot and sultry, and her tray felt heavier and tired her more than usual. Five boxes would lighten it, and if she sold her berries at eight cents, she would clear two cents and a half, and that made her something.

“I’ll tell you what I will do,” she said, after thinking a few moments; I don’t feel as well as usual to-day, and my tray is heavy. Five boxes sold will be something. You shall have them at nine cents. They cost me seven and a half, and I’m sure it’s worth a cent and a half a box to cry them about the streets such hot weather as this.”

“I have told you, my good woman, exactly what I will do,” said the customer, with dignity, “If you are willing to take what I offer you, say so; if not we need’nt stand here any longer.”

“Well, I supposed you will have to take them,” replied the strawberry woman, seeing that there was no hope of doing better. “But it’s too little.”

“It’s enough,” said the lady, as she turned to call a servant. Five boxes of fine large strawberries were received, and forty cents paid for them. The lady re-entered the parlor, pleased at her good bargain, while the poor woman turned from the door, sad and disheartened. She walked nearly the distance of a square before she could trust her voice to utter the monotonous cry of

“Strawb’rees! Strawb’rees!

An hour afterwards, a friend called upon Mrs. Mier, the lady who had bought the strawberries. After talking about various matters and things, interesting to lady housekeepers, Mrs. Mier said—

“How much did you pay for the strawberries, this morning?”

“Ten cents.”

“You paid too much. I bought them for eight.”

“For eight! Were they good ones?”

“Step into the dining room, and I will show them to you.”

Christian Olavius Zeuthen. Interior in the House of Lord Chamberlain O’Neill, Strandraede, Copenhagen. Pen and brush and black ink, watercolor, graphite on paper, 1844. Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, New York, N.Y.

The ladies stepped into the dining room, when Mrs. Mier displayed her large red berries, which were really much finer than she had supposed them to be.

“You did’nt get them for eight cents,” remarked the visitor incredulously.

“Yes, I did; I paid forty cents for five quarts.”

“While I paid fifty, for some not near so good.”

“I suppose you paid just what you were asked.”

“Yes, I always do that. I buy from one woman during the season, who agrees to furnish me at the regular market price.”

“Which you always find to be two or three cents above what you can get them for in the market.”

“You always buy in the market.”

“I bought these from a woman at the door.”

“Did she only ask eight cents for them?”

“Oh, no, she asked ten cents, and pretended that she got twelve and a half for the same quality of berries yesterday. But I never give these people what they ask.”

“Well, I never can find it in my heart to ask a poor tired-looking woman at my door, to take a cent less for her fruit than she asks me. A cent or two, while it is of little account to me, must be of great importance to her.”

“You are a very poor economist, I see,” said Mrs. Mier. “If that is the way you deal with every one, your husband, no doubt, finds his expense account a very serious item.”

“I don’t know about that. He never complains. He allows me a certain sum every week to keep the house, and find my own and the children’s clothes; and so far from ever calling on him for more, I always have a fifty or a hundred dollars lying by me.”

“You must have a precious large allowance, then, considering your want of economy in paying every body just what they ask for their things.”

“Oh, no! I don’t do that exactly, Mrs. Mier. If I consider the price of a thing too high, I don’t buy it.”

“You paid too high for your strawberries, to-day.”

“Perhaps I did, although I am by no means certain.”

Charles Cromwell Ingham. Portrait of Fidelia Marshall. Oil on canvas, c. 1840, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.

“You can judge for yourself. Mine cost but eight cents, and you own that they are superior to yours at ten cents.”

“Still, yours may have been too cheap, instead of mine too dear.”

“Too cheap! that is funny! I never saw anything too cheap in my life. The great trouble is that everything is too dear. What do you mean by too cheap.”

“The person who sold them to you may not have made profit enough upon them to pay for her time and labor. If this were the case, she sold them to you too cheap.”

“Suppose she paid too high for them? Is the purchaser to pay for her error?”

“Whether she did so, it would be hard to tell, and even if she had made such a mistake, I think it would be more just and humane to pay her a price that would give her a fair profit, instead of taking from her the means of buying bread for her children. At least, this is my way of reasoning.”

“And a precious lot of money it must take to support such a system of reasoning. But how much, pray, do you have a week to keep the family. I am curious to know.”

“Thirty-five dollars.”

“Thirty-five dollars! You are jesting.”

George Linen. Portrait of a New York Lady. Oil on canvas mounted on aluminum, c. 1840. Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.

“Oh, no! That is exactly what I receive, and as I have said, I find the sum ample.”

“While I receive fifty dollars a week,” said Mrs. Mier, “and am forever calling on my husband to settle some bill or other for me. And yet I never pay the exorbitant prices asked by every body for every thing. I am strictly economical in my family. While other people pay their domestics a dollar and a half and two dollars a week, I give but a dollar and a quarter each to my cook and chambermaid, and require the chambermaid to help the washerwoman on Mondays. Nothing is wasted in my kitchen, for I take care in marketing, not to allow room for waste. I don’t know how it is that you save money on thirty-five dollars with your system, while I find fifty dollars inadequate with my system.”

The exact difference in the two systems will be clearly understood by the reader when he is informed that although Mrs. Mier never paid anybody as much as was at first asked for an article, and was always talking about economy, and trying to practise it, by withholding from others what was justly their due, as in the case of the strawberry woman, yet she was a very extravagant person, and spared no money in gratifying her own pride. Mrs. Gilman, her visitor, was on the contrary, really economical, because she was moderate in all her desires, and was usually as well satisfied with an article of dress or furniture that cost ten or twenty dollars, as Mrs. Mier was with one that cost forty or fifty dollars. In little things, the former was not so particular as to infringe the right of others, while in large matters she was careful not to run into extravagance in order to gratify her own or children’s pride and vanity, while the latter pursued a course directly opposite.

Mrs. Gilman was not as much dissatisfied on reflection, about the price she had paid for her strawberries, as she had felt at first.

“I would rather pay these poor creatures two cents a quart too much than too little,” she said to herself—“dear knows they earn their money hard enough, and get but a scanty portion after all.”

Although the tray of the poor strawberry woman, when she passed from the presence of Mrs. Mier, was lighter by five boxes, her heart was heavier, and that made her steps more weary than before. The next place at which she stopped, she found the same disposition to beat her down in her price.

“I’ll give you nine cents, and take four boxes,” said the lady.

“Indeed madam, that is too little,” replied the woman; ten cents is the lowest at which I can sell them, and make even a reasonable profit.”

“Well, say thirty-seven and a half for four boxes, and I will take them. It is only two cents and a half less than you ask for them.”

“Give me a fip, ma!—there comes the candy-man!” exclaimed a little fellow, pressing up to the side of the lady. “Quick ma! Here candy man!”

“Get a levy’s worth mother, do, won’t you? Cousin Lu’s coming to see us to-morrow.”

“Let him have a levy’s worth, candy-man. He’s such a rogue, I can’t resist him,” responded the mother. The candy was counted out, and the levy paid, when the man retired in his usual good humor.

“Shall I take these strawberries for thirty-seven and a half cents?” said the lady, the smile fading from her face. “It is all I am willing to give.”

“If you won’t pay any more, I must n’t stand for two cents and a half,” replied the woman, “although they would nearly buy a loaf of bread for the children,” she mentally added.

The four boxes were sold for the sum offered, and the woman lifted the tray upon her head, and moved on again. The sun shone still hotter and hotter as the day advanced. Large beads of perspiration rolled from the throbbing temples of the strawberry woman, as she passed wearily up one street and down another, crying her fruit at the top of her voice. At length all was sold but five boxes, and now it was past one o’clock. Long before this, she ought to have been at home. Faint from over-exertion, she lifted her tray from her head, and placing it upon a door-step she sat down to rest. As she sat thus, a lady came up and paused at the door of the house as if about to enter.

Artist Unknown. Portrait of a Praline Seller. Ink on paper, c. 1910. Smithsonian Natural
Museum of African American History and Culture, Washington, D.C.

“You look tired, my good woman,” she said, kindly. “This is a very hot day for such hard work as yours. How do you sell your strawberries?”

“I ought to have ten cents for them, but nobody seems willing to give ten cents, to-day, although they are very fine, and cost me as much as some I have got twelve and a half for.”

“How many boxes have you?”

“Five, ma’am.”

“They are very fine, sure enough,” said the lady, stopping down and examining them; and well worth ten cents. I’ll take them.”

“Thanky, ma’am. I was afraid I should have to take them home,” said the woman, her heart bounding up lightly.

The lady rang the bell, for it was at her door that the tired strawberry-woman had stopped to rest herself. While she was waiting for the door to be opened, the lady took from her purse the money for her strawberries, and handing it to the woman, said,

“Here is your money. Shall I tell the servant to bring you a glass of cool water? You are hot and tired.”

“If you please, ma’am,” said the woman, with a grateful look.

The water was sent out by the servant who was to receive the strawberries, and the tired woman drank it eagerly. Its refreshing coolness flowed through every vein, when she took up her tray to return home, both heart and step were lighter.

The lady, whose benevolent feelings had prompted her to the performance of this little act of kindness, could not help remembering the woman’s grateful look. She had not done much—not more than it was one’s duty to do; but the recollection of even that was pleasant, far more pleasant than could possibly have been Mrs. Mier’s self-congratulations at having saved ten cents on her purchase of five boxes of strawberries, notwithstanding the assurance of the poor woman who vended them, that, at the reduced rate, her profit on the whole would only be two cents and a half.

After dinner, Mrs. Mier went out and spent thirty dollars in purchasing jewelry for her eldest daughter, a young lady not yet eighteen years of age. That evening, at the tea-table, the strawberries were highly commended as being the largest and most delicious in flavor of any they had yet had; in reply to which Mrs. Mier stated, with an air of peculiar satisfaction, that she had got them for eight cents a box when they were worth at least ten cents.

“The woman asked me ten cents,” she said, “but I offered her eight and she took it.”

While the family of Mrs. Mier were enjoying their pleasant repast, the strawberry woman sat at a small table, around which were gathered three young children, the oldest but six years of age. She had started out in the morning with thirty boxes of strawberries, for which she was to pay seven and a half cents a box. If all had brought the ten cents a box, she would had made seventy-five cents; but such was not the case. Rich ladies had beaten her down in price—had chaffered with her for the few pennies of profits to which her hard labor entitled her—and actually robbed her of the meagre pittance she strove to earn for her children. Instead of realizing the small sum of seventy-five cents, she had cleared only forty-five cents [1]. With this, she bought a little Indian meal [2] and molasses for her own and her children’s supper and breakfast.

William Morris Hunt. Violet Girl. Lithograph with tint stone on paper, 1857.
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.

As she sat with her children, eating the only food she was able to provide for them, and thought of what had occurred during the day, a feeling of bitterness toward her kind came over her; but the remembrance of the kind words and the glass of cool water, so timely and thoughtfully tendered to her, was like leaven in the waters of Marah [3]. Her heart softened, and with the tears stealing to her eyes, she glanced upward, and asked a blessing on her who had remembered that, though poor, she was still human.

Economy is a good thing and should be practised by all, but it should show itself in denying ourselves, not in oppressing others. We see persons spending dollar after dollar foolishly one hour, and in the next trying to save a penny piece of a wood-sawyer, coal-heaver, or market woman. Such things are disgraceful if not dishonest.

Arthur, T.S. “The STrawberry Woman.” The youth’s companion 21, No. 19 (September 1847): 73-74.

[1] The forty-five cents that the strawberry woman makes would be equivalent to $15.87 in 2022. Mrs. Gilman’s $35 a week would be $1,234, and Mrs. Mier’s $50 a week for the household would be $1,763. Over the course of a year, Mrs. Mier receives the equivalent of nearly $92,000 (an inadequate amount), she pays each of her domestic staff a yearly salary the equivalent of just under $2,300.

[2] Indian meal is a term for cornmeal, which was used for many recipes, such as these, from 1800s cookbooks: https://vintagerecipesandcookery.com/cooking-with-corn-meal/

[3] Holy Bible, New King James Version: “So Moses brought Israel from the Red. Sea; then they went out into the Wilderness of Shur. And they went three days in the wilderness and found no water. Now when they came to Marah, they could not drink the waters of Marah, for they were bitter. Therefore the name of it was called Marah. And the people complained against Moses, saying, ‘What shall we drink?’ So he cried out to the Lord, and the Lord showed him a tree. When he cast it into the waters, the waters were made sweet.” (Exodus 15:22-25)

Contexts

Timothy Shay Arthur moved to Philadelphia in 1841, and given the mention of Walnut Street and the Pennsylvania slang noted in the definitions below, this story is likely set in Philadelphia. Much of Arthur’s writing concerned morality, particularly temperance, which inspired his 1854 publication Ten Nights in a Bar-Room and What I Saw There, the most successful temperance book of the time. The Pennsylvania Center for the Book has a brief biography of Arthur’s life and career.

This story appeared amid ongoing riots and violence perpetrated by white Philadelphians against Black neighborhoods and churches, which were only exacerbated by the growing abolition movement and the Pennsylvania State Constitution of 1838 rescinding the right for free Black men to vote. The Nativist movement continued to gain ground in Philadelphia and elsewhere throughout the 1840s and extended to anti-Irish Catholic sentiment, which was further formalized during the next decade with the American or Know Nothing Party.

Definitions from Oxford English Dictionary:

chaffer: To treat about a bargain; to bargain, haggle about terms or price.

chambermaid: A woman employed to clean the bedrooms in a house or hotel.

dear: At a high price; at great cost; usually with such verbs as buycostpaysell, etc.

domestic: A household servant or attendant.

fip: Short for fipenny bit; 1860 usage from J.R. Bartlett’s Dictionary of Americanisms: In Pennsylvania, and several of the Southern States, the vulgar name for the Spanish half-real

levy: U.S. regional ‘The sum of twelve and a half cents; a “bit” (Cent. Dict.); from J.R. Bartlett’s Dictionary of Americanisms: In Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia, the Spanish real…twelve and a half cents.

trifle: A ‘small sum of money, or a sum treated as of no moment; a slight ‘consideration’.

Resources for Further Study
  • The Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia has a summary of the riots of the 1830s and 1840s, along with a wealth of essays about the city’s history in the first half of the 19th century.
  • During the riots, many all-white volunteer firefighting companies refused to help, and when Good Will Engine Company responded to a fire rioters set at the California House, a rioter shot and killed one of the white firefighters.
  • A silver trumpet presented to the Good Will Engine Company is an emblem of part of the complex history of philanthropy in the U.S. While this essay suggests a charitable attitude toward the less fortunate, the National Museum of American History and the Smithsonian’s Philanthropy Initiative looks at the “complicated legacy” of helping others.
Contemporary Connections

While this story doesn’t engage with the growing nativist sentiment of its time, Lorraine Boissoneault argues that the movement’s effects are still visible in American politics.

Categories
1820s Cats Short Story

Anecdote of a Cat

Anecdote of a Cat

Author Unknown
Annotations by Josh benjamin
Haskell and Allen. Pussy’s Family. Lithograph, c. 1872. National Museum of American History, Washington, D.C.

Volumes have been filled with accounts and praises of the sagacity of dogs; but cats seem to have been generally considered an ill-natured, stupid race. The following anecdote, related in “Good’s Book of Nature,” proves that there are some exceptions to this dishonourable character.

“A favourite cat, that was accustomed, from day to day, to take her station quietly at my elbow, on the writing table, sometimes for hour after hour, whilst I was engaged in study, became, at length, less constant in her attendance, as she had a kitten to take care of. One morning, she places herself in the same spot, but seemed unquiet; and instead of seating herself as usual, continued to rub her furry sides against my hand and pen, as though resolved to draw my attention, and make me leave off. As soon as she had accomplished this point, she leaped down on the carpet, and made toward the door, with a look of great uneasiness. I opened the door for her, as she seemed to desire; but, instead of going forward, she turned round, and looked earnestly at me, as though she wished me to follow her, or had something to communicate. I did not fully understand her meaning, and being much engaged at the time, shut the door upon her, that she might go where she liked. In less than an hour afterwards, she had again found an entrance into the room, and drawn close to me; but, instead of mounting the table, and rubbing herself against my hand, as before, she was now under the table, and continued to rub herself against my feet; on moving which, I struck them against something that seemed to be in the way; and, on looking down, beheld with grief and astonishment, the dead body of her little kitten, covered over with cinder-dust. I now entered into the entire train of this afflicted cat’s feelings. She had suddenly lost the nursling she doated on, and was resolved to make me acquainted with it, that I might know her grief, and inquire into the cause. She found me too dull to understand her expressive motioning,—that I would not follow her to the cinder-heap, on which the dead kitten had been thrown,—and she took the great labour of bringing it to me herself, from the area, on the basement floor, up a whole flight of stairs, to lay it at my feet. I took the kitten up in my hand, the cat still following me, and inquired into its death, for which, I found no one was very much to blame; and the yearning mother having thus gotten her master to enter into her cause, and share her sorrows, gradually took comfort, and resumed her former station at my side.”

Cornelis Visscher. The Large Cat. Etching with engraving on off-white laid paper, c. 1657. Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, New York, N.Y.
Author unknown. “Anecdote of a Cat.” The Juvenile Miscellany 4, no. 1 (March 1828): 86-88.
Contexts

During the 19th century, cats were not commonly the domesticated companions they are now. Throughout much of history, aside from ancient Egypt, they were severely mistreated and considered evil. By the mid-1800s, cats were still subject to an undeserved reputation on par with weasels and raccoons, as noted by cat historian Paul Koudounaris in” ‘The Feline States of America’: How Cats Helped Shape the US.

In an excerpt from her book The Pug Who Bit Napoleon: Animal Tales of the 18th and 19th Centuries, Mimi Matthews recognizes that although cats still lacked the popularity they now have, many Victorian-era cat owners cared enough to hold elaborate funerals for their pets. Several other articles on Matthews’ website offer some historical context for cats.

Resources for Further Study
Contemporary Connections

The stereotype of the crazy cat lady persists, although current efforts push back against negative connotations of women and their cats.

Categories
1860s Short Story Trees

The Talk of the Trees that Stand in the Village Street

The Talk of the Trees that Stand in the Village Street

By Jane Andrews
Annotations by Josh benjamin
Childe Hassam. The Vermont Village (Peacham). Etching on paper, 1923. Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.

HOW still it is! — nobody in the village street; the children all at school, and the very dogs sleeping lazily in the sunshine; only a south wind blows lightly through the trees, lifting the great fans of the horse-chestnut, tossing the slight branches of the elm against the sky, like single feathers of a great plume, and swinging out fragrance from the heavy-hanging linden-blossoms.

Through the silence there is a little murmur, like a low song; it is the song of the trees; each has its own voice, which may be known from all others by the ear that has learned how to listen.

The topmost branches of the elm are talking of the sky, — of those highest white clouds that float like tresses of silver hair in the far blue, — of the sunrise gold and the rose-color of sunset, that always rest upon them most lovingly. But down deep in the heart of the great branches, you may hear something quite different, and not less sweet.

“Peep under my leaves,” sings the elm-tree, “out at the ends of my broadest branches. What hangs there so soft and gray? Who comes with a flash of wings and gleam of golden breast among the dark leaves, and sits above the gray hanging nest to sing his full sweet tune? Who worked there together so happily all the May-time, with gray honeysuckle fibres, twining the little nest, until there it hung securely over the road, bound and tied and woven firmly to the slender twigs, — so slender, that the squirrels even cannot creep down for the eggs, much less can Jack or Neddy, who are so fond of bird’s-nesting, ever hope to reach the home of our golden robin?

“There my leaves shelter him like a roof from rain and from sunshine. I rock the cradle when the father and mother are away, and the little ones cry, and in my softest tone I sing to them; yet they are never quite satisfied with me, but beat their wings, and stretch out their heads, and cannot be happy until they hear their father.

“The squirrel, who lives in the hole where the two great branches part, hears what I say, and curls up his tail, while he turns his bright eyes towards the swinging nest which he can never reach.”

Childe Hassam. Easthampton Elms in May. Etching on paper, 1925. Smithsonian American Art Museum and its Renwick Gallery, Washington, D.C.

The fanning wind wafts across the road the voice of the old horse-chestnut, who also has a word to say about the bird’s-nests.

“When my blossoms were fresh white pyramids, came a swift flutter of wings about them one day, and a dazzlingly beautiful little bird thrust his long, delicate bill among the flowers; and while he held himself there in the air, without touching his tiny feet to twig or stem, but only by the swift fanning of long green-tinted wings, I offered him my best flowers for his breakfast, and bowed my great leaves as a welcome to him. The dear little thing had been here before, while yet the sticky brown buds which wrap up my leaves had not burst open to the warm sunshine. He and his mate, whose feather dress was not so fine as his, gathered the gum from the outside of the buds, and pulled the warm wool from the inside; and I could watch them, as they flew away to the maple yonder; for then the trees that stand between us had no leaves to hide the maple as they do now.

“Back and forth flew the birds, from the topmost maple-branch to my opening buds; and day by day I saw a little nest growing, very small and round, lined warmly with wool from my buds, and thatched all over the outside with bits of lichen, gray and green, to match what grew on the maple-branches about it; and this thatch was glued on with the gum from my brown buds. When it was finished, it was delicate enough for the cradle of a little princess; and the outside was so carefully matched to the tree by lichens that the sharpest eyes from below could not detect it. What a safe, snug home for the humming-birds!

“By the time the two tiny eggs were laid, I could no longer see the nest, for the thick foliage of other trees had built up a green wall between me and it. But for many days the mother-bird stayed away, and the father came alone to drink honey from my blossom cups; so I knew that the eggs were hatching under her warm folded wings; for I have seen such things before among my own branches in the robins’ nests and the bluebirds’.

Mannevillette Elihu Dearing Brown. Humming birds / from life & on stone. Lithograph, c. 1832. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, D.C.

“Now my flowers are all gone, and in their place the nuts are growing in their prickly balls. I have nothing to tempt the humming-bird, and he never visits me; only the yellow birds hop gayly from branch to branch, and the robins come sometimes.” And the horse-chestnut sighed, for he missed the humming-bird; and he flapped his great leaves in the very face of the linden-blossoms, and forgot to say, “Excuse me.” But the linden is now, and for many days, full of sweetness, and will not answer ungraciously even so careless a touch.

Yes, the linden is full of sweetness, and sends out the fragrance from his blossoms in through the chamber windows, and down upon the people who pass in the street below; and he tells, all the time, his story of how his pink-covered leaf-buds opened in the spring mornings, and unfolded the fresh green leaves, which were so tender and full of green juices that it was no wonder the mother-moth had thought the branches a good place whereon to lay her eggs; for, as soon as they should be all laid, she would die, and there would be no one to provide food for her babies when they should creep out.

So the nice mother-moth made a toilsome journey up my great trunk,” sung the linden, “and left her eggs where she knew the freshest green leaves, would be coming out by the time the young ones should leave the eggs.

Mary Nimmo Moran. Old Lindens — Near Easthampton. Etching on paper, 1885. Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.

“And they came out indeed, somewhat to my sorrow; for instead of being, like their mother, sober, well-behaved little moths, they were green canker-worms [1], and such hungry little things, that I really began to fear I should have not a whole leaf left upon me, when one day they spun for themselves fine silken ropes, and swung themselves down from leaf to leaf, and from branch to branch, and in a day or two were all gone.

“A little flaxen-haired girl sat on the broad doorstep at my feet, and caught the canker-worms in her white apron. She liked to see them hump up their backs and measure off the inches of her white checked apron with their little green bodies. And I, although I liked them well enough at first, was not sorry to lose them when they went. I heard the child’s mother telling her that they had come down to make for themselves beds in the earth, where they would sleep until the early spring, and wake to find themselves grown into moths just like their mothers who climbed up the tree to lay eggs. We shall see, when next spring comes, if that is so. Now since they went I have done my best to refresh my leaves and keep young and happy; and here are my sweet blossoms to prove that I have yet within me vigorous life.”

The elm-tree heard what the linden sung, and said, “Very true, very true: I too have suffered from the canker-worms; but I have yet leaves enough left for a beautiful shade, and the poor crawling things must surely eat something.” And the elm bowed gracefully to the linden, out of sympathy for him.

But the linden has heard the voices of the young robins who live in the nest among his highest boughs; and he must yet tell to the horse-chestnut how sad it was, the other day in the thunder-storm, when the wind upset the nest, and one little bird was thrown out and killed, while the father and mother flew about in the greatest distress, until Charley came, climbed the tree, and fitted the nest safely back into its place.

George Elbert Burr. Old Pine and Cedar. Etching on paper, c. 1923. Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.

How much the trees have to say! And there is the pine, who was born and brought up in the woods: he is always whispering secrets of the great forest, and of the river beside which he grew. The other trees can’t always understand him; he is the poet among them, and a poet is always suspected of knowing a little more than any one else.

Sometime I may try to tell you something of what he says; but here ends the talk of the trees that stood in the village street.

Andrews, Jane. “The talk of the trees that stand in the village street.” Our Young Folks 4, no. 10 (October 1868): 598-600.

[1] Cankerworm larvae are commonly called inchworms. They start as eggs deposited on trees, transform into pupae in the soil, and emerge as moths. Significant cankerworm feeding over several years can cause trees to lose all their leaves, weakening and killing the branches.

Contexts

This article appeared on the cusp of a shift in where people lived in the U.S., as the late 19th century brought rapid growth of cities. While most people still lived in rural areas, the expansion of city life helped shape many aspects of modern life.

Resources for Further Study
  • Urban Forests by Jill Jonnes considers a historical context for how trees have been integrated into U.S. cities.
  • Arnoldia, the quarterly magazine of Harvard University’s Arnold Arboretum, contributes to an ongoing conversation about the importance of trees.
Contemporary Connections

Several modern organizations work to promote and support maintaining and increasing the presence of trees in cities:

Duke University ecologist Renata Kamakura shares their insights about helping trees survive in cities.

Categories
1860s Family Farm life Food Harvest Short Story

How the Indian Corn Grows

How the Indian Corn Grows

By Jane Andrews
Annotations by josh benjamin
Henry Ward Ranger. The Cornfield. Oil on canvas, n.d. Smithsonian American Art Museum and its Renwick Gallery, Washington, D.C.

THE children came in from the field with their hands full of the soft, pale-green corn-silk. Annie had rolled hers into a bird’s-nest, while Willie had dressed his little sister’s hair with the long, damp tresses, until she seemed more like a mermaid, with pale blue eyes shining out between the locks of her sea-green hair, than like our own Alice.

They brought their treasures to the mother, who sat on the door-step of the farm-house, under the tall, old elm-tree that had been growing there ever since her mother was a child. She praised the beauty of the bird’s-nest, and kissed the little mermaiden to find if her lips tasted of salt water; but then she said, “Don’t break any more of the silk, dear children, else we shall have no ears of corn in the field, — none to roast before our picnic fires, and none to dry and pop at Christmas time next winter.”

Now the children wondered at what their mother said, and begged that she would tell them how the silk could make the round, full kernels of corn. And this is the story that the mother told, while they all sat on the door-step under the old elm.

“When your father broke up the ground with his plough, and scattered in the seed-corn, the crows were watching from the old apple-tree; and they came down to pick up the corn; and indeed they did carry away a good deal ; but the days went by, the spring showers moistened the earth, and the sun shone, and so the seed-corn swelled, and, bursting open, thrust out two little hands, one reaching down to hold itself firmly in the earth, and one reaching up to the light and air. The first was never very beautiful, but certainly quite useful; for, besides holding the corn firmly in its place, it drew up water and food for the whole plant; but the second spread out two long, slender green leaves, that waved with every breath of air, and seemed to rejoice in every ray of sunshine. Day by day it grew taller and taller, and by and by put out new streamers broader and stronger, until it stood higher than Willie’s head; then, at the top, came a new kind of bud, quite different from those that folded the green streamers, and when that opened, it showed a nodding flower which swayed and bowed at the top of the stalk like the crown of the whole plant. And yet this was not the best that the corn plant could do, — for lower down, and partly hidden by the leaves, it had hung out a silken tassel of pale, sea-green color, like the hair of a little mermaid. Now, every silken thread was in truth a tiny tube, so fine that our eyes cannot see the bore of it. The nodding flower that grew so gayly up above there was day by day ripening a golden dust called pollen, and every grain of this pollen — and they were very small grains indeed — knew perfectly well that the silken threads were tubes; and they felt an irresistible desire to enter the shining passages and explore them to the very end; so one day, when the wind was tossing the whole blossoms this way and that, the pollen-grains danced out, and, sailing down on the soft breeze, each one crept in at the open door of a sea-green tube. Down they slid over the shining floors, and what was their delight to find, when they reached the end, that they had all along been expected, and for each one was a little room prepared, and sweet food for their nourishment; and from this time they had no desire to go away, but remained each in his own place, and grew every day stronger and larger and rounder, even as Baby in the cradle there, who has nothing to do but grow.

Henry Ward Ranger. Untitled. Watercolor, 1883. Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.

“Side by side were their cradles, one beyond another in beautiful straight rows; and as the pollen-grains grew daily larger, the cradles also grew for their accommodation, until at last they felt themselves really full of sweet, delicious life; and those who lived at the tops of the rows peeped out from the opening of the dry leaves which wrapped them all together, and saw a little boy with his father coming through the corn-field, while yet everything was beaded with dew, and the sun was scarcely an hour high. The boy carried a basket, and the father broke from the corn-stalks the full, firm ears of sweet corn, and heaped the basket full.”

“O mother!” cried Willie,“ that was father and I. Don’t you remember how we used to go out last summer every morning before breakfast to bring in the corn? And we must have taken that very ear; for I remember how the full kernels lay in straight rows, side by side, just as you have told.”

Now Alice is breaking her threads of silk, and trying to see the tiny opening of the tube; and Annie thinks she will look for the pollen-grains the very next time she goes to the cornfield.

Andrews, Jane. “How the indian corn grows.” Our Young Folks 1, No. 10 (October 1865): 630-31.
Contexts

This story, while not about large-scale agriculture, did come at a time when the strength of farming in several northern states helped buoy U.S. Civil War efforts. At the start of the war, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Iowa were seeing incredible growth in crop production, including wheat, corn, and oats. Plentiful domestic food sources were situated in the north, far from the fighting. The abundance also helped maintain U.S. economic importance for Europe as the Confederate States’ cotton exports dwindled. For more information on the economics of U.S. agriculture during the Civil War, see this paper by Emerson D. Fite.

Resources for Further Study
Contemporary Connections

Organizations like Native Seeds/SEARCH and Native American Food Sovereignty Alliance seek to preserve heirloom seeds and plants as part of larger missions involving food security and sovereignty for Native Americans. Corn is one of the important foods in these efforts, which presents a different philosophy than what makes corn the largest industrial farm product in the U.S. — an industry that supports animal farming, ethanol production, and processed foods.

Categories
1910s African American Fairies Fairy Tale Myth Short Story

The Black Fairy

The Black Fairy

By Fenton Johnson
Annotations by Rene Marzuk
Robert Henri. Eva Green. Oil on canvas, 1907, Wichita Art Museum, Roland O. Murdock Collection. Public Domain.

Little Annabelle was lying on the lawn, a volume of Grimm before her. Annabelle was nine years of age, the daughter of a colored lawyer, and the prettiest dark child in the village.[1] She had long played in the fairyland of knowledge, and was far advanced for one of her years. A vivid imagination was her chief endowment, and her story creatures often became real flesh-and-blood creatures.

“I wonder,” she said to herself that afternoon, “if there is any such thing as a colored fairy? Surely there must be, but in this book they’re all white.”

Closing the book, her eyes rested upon the landscape that rolled itself out lazily before her. The stalks in the cornfield bent and swayed, their tassels bowing to the breeze, until Annabelle could have easily sworn that those were Indian fairies. And beyond lay the woods, dark and mossy and cool, and there many a something mysterious could have sprung into being, for in the recess was a silvery pool where the children played barefooted. A summer mist like a thin veil hung over the scene, and the breeze whispered tales of far-away lands.

Hist! Something stirred in the hazel bush near her. Can I describe little Annabelle’s amazement at finding in the bush a palace and a tall and dark-faced fairy before it?

“I am Amunophis, the Lily of Ethiopia,” said the strange creature. “And I come to the children of the Seventh Veil.”[2]

She was black and regal, and her voice was soft and low and gentle like the Niger on a summer evening.[3] Her dress was the wing of the sacred beetle, and whenever the wind stirred it played the dreamiest of music.[4] Her feet were bound with golden sandals, and on her head was a crown of lotus leaves.

“And you’re a fairy?” gasped Annabelle.

“Yes, I am a fairy, just as you wished me to be. I live in the tall grass many, many miles away, where a beautiful river called the Niger sleeps.” And stretching herself beside Annabelle, on the lawn, the fairy began to whisper:

“I have lived there for over five thousand years. In the long ago a city rested there, and from that spot black men and women ruled the world. Great ships laden with spice and oil and wheat would come to its port, and would leave with wines and weapons of war and fine linens. Proud and great were the black kings of this land, their palaces were built of gold, and I was the Guardian of the City. But one night when I was visiting an Indian grove the barbarians from the North came down and destroyed our shrines and palaces and took our people up to Egypt. Oh, it was desolate, and I shed many tears, for I missed the busy hum of the market and the merry voices of the children.

“But come with me, little Annabelle, I will show you all this, the rich past of the Ethiopian.”

She bade the little girl take hold of her hand and close her eyes, and wish herself in the wood behind the cornfield. Annabelle obeyed, and ere they knew it they were sitting beside the clear water in the pond.

“You should see the Niger,” said the fairy. “It is still beautiful, but not as happy as in the old days. The white man’s foot has been cooled by its water, and the white man’s blossom is choking out the native flower.” And she dropped a tear so beautiful the costliest pearl would seem worthless beside it.

“Ah! I did not come to weep,” she continued, “but to show you the past.”

So in a voice sweet and sad she sang an old African lullaby and dropped into the water a lotus leaf.[5] A strange mist formed, and when it had disappeared she bade the little girl to look into the pool. Creeping up Annabelle peered into the glassy surface, and beheld a series of vividly colored pictures.

Brass Plaque: King Esigie Shielded by Attendants. Brass, 1500/1599 [made in Benin City], The British Museum. Public Domain.

First she saw dark blacksmiths hammering in the primeval forests and giving fire and iron to all the world. Then she saw the gold of old Ghana and the bronzes of Benin.[6][7] Then the black Ethiopians poured down upon Egypt and the lands and cities bowed and flamed. Next she saw a great city with pyramids and stately temples. It was night, and a crimson moon was in the sky.[8] Red wine was flowing freely, and beautiful dusky maidens were dancing in a grove of palms. Old and young were intoxicated with the joy of living, and a sense of superiority could be easily traced in their faces and attitude. Presently red flame hissed everywhere, and the magnificence of remote ages soon crumbled into ash and dust. Persian soldiers ran to and fro conquering the band of defenders and severing the woman and children. Then came the Mohammedans and kingdom on kingdom arose, and with the splendor came ever more slavery.[9]

The next picture was that of a group of fugitive slaves, forming the nucleus of three tribes, hurrying back to the wilderness of their fathers.

In houses built as protection against the heat the blacks dwelt, communing with the beauty of water and sky and open air. It was just between twilight and evening and their minstrels were chanting impromptu hymns to their gods of nature. And as she listened closely, Annabelle thought she caught traces of the sorrow songs in the weird pathetic strains of the African music mongers.[10] From the East the warriors of the tribe came, bringing prisoners, whom they sold to white strangers from the West.

“It is the beginning,” whispered the fairy, as a large Dutch vessel sailed westward.[11] Twenty boys and girls bound with strong ropes were given to a miserable existence in the hatchway of the boat. Their captors were strange creatures, pale and yellow haired, who were destined to sell them as slaves in a country cold and wild, where the palm trees and the cocoanut never grew and men spoke a language without music. A light, airy creature, like an ancient goddess, few before the craft guiding it in its course.

Stowage of the British Slave Ship “Brookes” Under the Regulated Slave Trade Act of 1788. Etching, Library of Congress rare Book and Special Collections Division. Public Domain.

“That is I,” said the fairy. “In that picture I am bringing your ancestors to America. It was my hope that in the new civilization I could build a race that would be strong enough to redeem their brothers. They have gone through great tribulations and trials, and have mingled with the blood of the fairer race; yet though not entirely Ethiopian they have not lost their identity. Prejudice is a furnace through which molten gold is poured. Heaven be merciful unto all races! There is one more picture –the greatest of all, but –farewell, little one, I am going.”

“Going?” cried Annabelle. “Going? I want to see the last picture—and when will you return, fairy?”

“When the race has been redeemed. When the brotherhood of man has come into the world; and there is no longer a white civilization or a black civilization, but the civilization of all men. I belong to the world council of the fairies, and we are all colors and kinds. Why should not men be as charitable unto one another? When that glorious time comes I shall walk among you and be one of you, performing my deeds of magic and playing with the children of every nation, race and tribe. Then, Annabelle, you shall see the last picture—and the best.”

Slowly she disappeared like a summer mist, leaving Annabelle amazed.

Malmström, August. Dancing Fairies. Oil on canvas, 1866, Nationalmuseum, Sweden. Public Domain.
JOHNSON, FENTON. “THE BLACK FAIRY,” THE CRISIS 6, NO. 6 (OCTOBER 1913): 292-94.

[1] The establishment of black colleges and graduate schools during the Reconstruction Era (1865-1877) allowed the emergence of a new class of black professionals. The Howard School of Law, established on January 4, 1869, was the first black law school in America. Macon Bolling Allen (1816-1894), however, is believed to be the first African American licensed lawyer. He received his certification on July 3, 1844.

[2] The following excerpt from W. E. B. Dubois’s 1903 landmark The Souls of Black Folk, in which he partially outlines the influential concept of double-consciousness, may contextualize Fenton Johnson’s allusion to the Seventh Veil:

“After the Egyptian and Indian, the Greek and Roman, the Teuton and Mongolian, the Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world,”a world which yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself thought the revelation of the other world.”

[3] With a length of 2,600 miles, the Niger River is the main river of Western Africa and the third longest African river after the Nile and the Congo.

Sun God Depicted as a Scarab with Human Head and Arms. Limestone, 25th Dynasty (Ethiopians), Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Germany. Public Domain.

[4] The sacred beetle refers to the Egyptian scarab, a dung beetle that for the ancient Egyptians symbolized renewal and rebirth. This beetle was also associated with Khepri, a divine manifestation of the early morning sun.

[5] Tigit Shibabaw‘s interpretation of Eshururu, an Ethiopian lullaby in Ahmaric, an Ethiopian Semitic language. “Eshururu” means “hush little baby don’t you cry.”

[6] As of today, Ghana remains a leading producer of gold in Ghana and is the seventh gold producer in the world. Unregulated small-scale gold mining in this country are a current environmental concern due to its devastating effect on the landscape.

[7] The “Benin Bronzes” are brass-and-bronze sculptures whose creation dates back to the 16th century. In 1897, British soldiers looted hundreds of these objects from the Benin Royal Palace after a military expedition that effectively ended the independent Kingdom of Benin. The same year, the British Museum displayed a set of “Benin Bronzes” that together with later acquisitions from private collections still remains in the museum’s collection. In October 2021, the British Museum received a request from Nigeria’s Federal Ministry of Information and Culture for the return of Nigerian antiquities. Representatives from the Benin Royal Palace have also asked publicly for the restitution of these looted art objects.

[8] “Crimson moon” and “blood moon” are non-scientific terms for a total lunar eclipse, during which the moon takes on a reddish color.

[9] Mohamedans are followers of Muhammad, the Islamic prophet. In the XVI century, Islamic forces led by Ahmad ibn Ibrahim al-Ghazi invaded Ethiopia.

[10] Sorrow Songs (or spirituals) belong to the musical tradition of black slaves during the antebellum South.

[11] Between 1596 and 1839, the Dutch, active participants in the transatlantic slave trades, transported half a million Africans westward across the Atlantic.

Contexts

Starting in 1912, the October issues of The Crisis, the official magazine of the NAACP, were dedicated to children. A typical edition of these children’s numbers would contain a special editorial piece and two or three literary works specifically for children, while still including the serious pieces about contemporary issues with a focus on race that The Crisis was known for. These October numbers were sprinkled with children’s photographs sent in by the readers.

In his first editorial for the Children’s number in 1912, W. E. B. Du Bois wrote that “there is a sense in which all numbers and all words of a magazine of ideas myst point to the child—to that vast immortality and wide sweep and infinite possibility which the child represents.”

The success of The Crisis’ children’s number led to the standalone The Brownies’ Book, a monthly magazine for African American children that circulated from January 1920 to December 1921 under the editorship of Du Bois, Augustus Granville Dill, and Jessie Fauset.

Fenton’s Johnson’s “The Black Fairy” also appeared in The Upward Path: A Reader for Colored Children in 1920.

Definitions from Oxford English Dictionary:

crimson: Of a deep red colour somewhat inclining towards purple.

hist: Used to enjoin silence, attract attention, or call on a person to listen.

Resources for Further Study
  • Ethiopianism, a literary-religious tradition that emerged during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, emphasized the classical values of African nations and their extensive histories before European colonization. In the United States, Ethiopianism “found expression in slave narratives, exhortations of slave preachers, and songs and folklore of southern black culture, as well as the sermons and political tracts of the urban elite.”
  • A brief history of fairies, courtesy of the World History Encyclopedia collective.
  • An article on fairies‘ folklore scholarship, with copious references and suggestions for further reading.
  • Kory, Fern. “Once upon a Time in Aframerica: The ‘Peculiar’ Significance of Fairies in the Brownies’ Book.” Children’s Literature, vol. 29, 2001, p. 91-112.
Contemporary Connections

Did you know that June 24th is International Fairy Day?

Louis Armstrong’s interpretation of “Go Down Moses,” an emblematic Sorrow Song.

Categories
1860s Forests Short Story Trees

How Quercus Alba Went to Explore the Under-World, and What Came of It

How Quercus Alba Went to Explore the Under-World, and What Came of It

By Jane Andrews
Annotations by Josh benjamin
Samuel Colman. “Oak Wood, Montauk, New York.” Graphite, pen and brown ink, brush and watercolor and white gouache on gray-green wove paper, 1880. Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, New York, NY.

QUERCUS ALBA lay on the ground, looking up at the sky. He lay in a little, brown, rustic cradle which would be pretty for any baby, but was specially becoming to his shining, bronzed complexion; for although his name, Alba, is the Latin word for white, he did not belong to the white race. He was trying to play with his cousins, Coccinea and Rubra, but they were two or three yards away from him, and not one of the three dared to roll any distance for fear of rolling out of his cradle; so it was n’t a lively play, as you may easily imagine. Presently, Rubra, who was a sturdy little fellow, hardly afraid of anything, summoned courage to roll full half a yard, and, having come within speaking distance, began to tell how his elder brother had, that very morning, started on the grand underground tour, which to the Quercus family is what going to Europe would be for you and me. Coccinea thought the account very stupid, said his brothers had all been, and he should go too sometime he supposed, and, giving a little shrug of his shoulders which set his cradle rocking, fell asleep in the very face of his visitors. Not so Alba; this was all news to him, — grand news. He was young and inexperienced, and, moreover, full of roving fancies; so he lifted his head as far as he dared, nodded delightedly as Rubra described the departure, and, when his cousin ceased speaking, asked eagerly, “And what will he do there ?”

Original illustration from Our Young Folks, p. 641.

“Do?” said Rubra, — “do ? why, he will do just what everybody else does who goes on the grand tour. What a foolish fellow you are to ask such a question!”

Now this was no answer at all, as you see plainly, and yet little Alba was quite abashed by it, and dared not push the question further for fear of displaying his ignorance; never thinking that we children are not born with our heads full of information on all subjects, and that the only way to fill them is to push our questions until we are utterly satisfied with the answers; and that no one has reason to feel ashamed of ignorance which is not now his own fault, but will soon become so if he hushes his questions for fear of showing it.

Here Alba made his first mistake. There is only one way to correct a mistake of this kind, and it is so excellent a way that it even brings you out at the end wiser than the other course could have done. Alba, I am happy to say, resolved at once on this course. “If,” said he, “Rubra does not choose to tell me about the grand tour, I will go and see for myself.” It was a brave resolve for a little fellow like him. He lost no time in preparing to carry it out; but, on pushing against the gate that led to the underground road, he found that the frost had fastened it securely, and he must wait for a warmer day. In the mean time, afraid to ask any more questions, he yet kept his ears open to gather any scraps of information that might be useful for his journey.

Listening ears can always hear; and Alba very soon began to learn, from the old trees overhead, from the dry rustling leaves around him, and from the little chipping-birds [1] that chatted together in the sunshine. Some said the only advantage of the grand tour was to make one a perfect and accomplished gentleman; others, that all the useful arts were taught abroad, and no one who wished to improve the world in which he lived would stay at home another year. Old grandfather Rubra, standing tall and grand, and stretching his knotty arms, as if to give force to his words, said, “Of all arts, the art of building is the noblest, and that can only be learned by those who take the grand tour; therefore all my boys have been sent long ago, and already many of my grandsons have followed them.”

Frank Lauder. “Red Oak Tree.” Autochrome photograph, 1933. Kansas City Public Library, Kansas City, MO.

Then there was a whisper among the leaves: “All very well, old Rubra, but of your sons or grandsons ever come back from the grand tour?

There was no answer; indeed, the leaves had n’t spoken loudly enough for the old gentleman to hear, for he was known to have a fiery temper, and it was scarcely safe to offend him; but the little brown chipping-birds said, one to another, “No, no, no, they never came back! they never came back!”

All this sent a chill through Alba’s heart, but he still held to his purpose; and in the night a warm and friendly rain melted the frozen gateway, and he boldly rolled out of his cradle forever, and, slipping through the portal, was lost to sight.

His mother looked for her baby; his brothers and cousins rolled over and about in search for him. Rubra began to feel sorry for the last scornful words he had said, and would have petted his little cousin with all his heart, if he could only have had him once again; but Alba was never again seen by his old friends and companions.

“How dark it is here, and how difficult for one to make his way through the thick atmosphere!” so thought little Alba, as he pushed and pushed slowly into the soft mud. Presently, a busy hum sounded all about him, and, becoming accustomed to the darkness, he could see little forms moving swiftly and industriously to and fro.

You children who live above, and play about on the hillsides and in the woods, have no idea what is going on all the while under your feet; how the dwarfs and the fairies are working there, weaving moss carpets and grass-blades, forming and painting flowers and scarlet mushrooms, tending and nursing all manner of delicate things which have yet to grow strong enough to push up and see the outside life, and learn to bear its cold winds and rejoice in its sunshine.

While Alba was seeing all this, he was still struggling on, but very slowly; for first he ran against the strong root of an old tree, then knocked his head upon a sharp stone, and finally, bruised and sore, tired, and quite in despair, he sighed a great sigh, and declared he could go no further. At that two odd little beings sprang to his side, – the one brown as the earth itself, with eyes like diamonds for brightness, and deft little fingers, cunning in all works of skill. Pulling off his wisp of a cap, and making a grotesque little bow, he asked, “Will you take a guide for the under-world tour?” “That I will,” said Alba, “for I no longer find myself able to move a step.” “Ha, ha!” laughed the dwarf, “of course you can’t move in that great body, the ways are too narrow; you must come out of yourself before you can get on in this journey. Put out your foot now, and I will show you where to step.” “Out of myself !” cried Alba, “why that is to die! My foot, did you say? I have n’t any feet; I was born in a cradle, and always lived in it until now, and could never do anything but rock and roll.”

“Ha, ha ha!” again laughed the dwarf, “ hear him talk! This is the way with all of them. No feet, does he say? Why, he has a thousand, if he only knew it; hands too, more than he can count. Ask him, sister, and see what he will say to you.”

With that a soft little voice said cheerfully, “Give me your hand, that I may lead you on the upward part of your journey; for, poor little fellow! it is indeed true that you do not know how to live out of your cradle, and we must show you the way.”

Encouraged by this kindly speech, Alba turned a little towards the speaker, and was about to say (as his mother had long ago taught him that he should in all difficulties) “I’ll try,” when a little cracking noise startled the whole company, and, hardly knowing what he did, Alba thrust out, through a slit in his shiny brown skin, a little foot reaching downward to follow the dwarf’s lead, and a little hand, extending upward, quickly clasped by that of the fairy, who stood smiling and lovely in her fair green garments, with a tender, tiny grass-blade binding back her golden hair. O, what a thrill went through Alba, as he felt this new possession! a hand and a foot, a thousand such, had they not said ? What it all meant he could only wonder; but the one real possession was at least certain, and in that he began to feel that all things were possible.

William N. Buckner, Jr. “Leaves.” Oil stick on paper, 1909. Smithsonian Anacostia Community Museum, Washington, D.C.

And now shall we see where the dwarf led him, and where the fairy? and what was actually done in the underground tour?

The dwarf had need of his bright eyes and his skilful hands; for the soft, tiny foot intrusted to him was a mere baby that had to find its way through a strange dark world, and, what was more, it must not only be guided, but also fed and tended carefully; so the bright eyes go before, and the brown fingers dig out a road-way, and the foot that has learned to trust its guide utterly follows on. There is no longer any danger; he runs against no rocks, he loses his way among no tangled roots ; and the hard earth seems to open gently before him, leading him to the fields where his own best food lies, and to hidden springs of sweet fresh water.

Do you wonder when I say the foot must be fed? Are n’t your feet fed? To be sure, your feet have no mouths of their own; but does n’t the mouth in your face eat for your whole body, hands and feet, ears and eyes, and all the rest? else how do they grow? The only difference here between you and Alba is that his foot has mouths of its own, and as it wanders on through the earth, and finds anything good for food, eats both for itself and for the rest of the body; for I must tell you that, as the little foot progresses, it does not take the body with it, but only grows longer and longer and longer, until, while one end remains at home, fastened to the body, the other end has travelled a distance such as would be counted miles by the atoms of people who live in the under-world. And, moreover, the foot no longer goes on alone; others have come, by tens, even by hundreds, to join it, and Alba begins to understand what the dwarf meant by thousands. Thus the feet travel on, running some to this side, some to that; here digging through a bed of clay, and there burying themselves in a soft sand-hill; taking a mouthful of carbon here and of nitrogen there. But what are these two strange articles of food? Nothing at all like bread and butter, you think. Different, indeed, they seem; but you will one day learn that bread and butter are made in part of these very same things, and they are just as useful to Alba as your breakfast, dinner, and supper are to you; for just as bread and butter, and other food, build your body, so carbon and nitrogen are going to build his; and you will presently see what a fine, large, strong body they can make; then, perhaps, you will be better able to understand what they are.

Shall we leave the feet to travel their own way for a while, and see where the fairy has led the little hand?

Frank Lauder. “Scarlet Oak.” Autochrome photograph, 1937. Kansas City Public Library, Kansas City, MO.

QUERCUS ALBA’S NEW SIGHT OF THE UPPER-WORLD.

It was a soft, helpless, little baby hand. Its folded fingers lay listlessly in the fairy’s gentle grasp. “Now we will go up,” she said. He had thought he was going down, and he had heard the chipping-birds say he would never come back again; but he had no will to resist the gentle motion, which seemed, after all, to be exactly what he wanted; so he presently found himself lifted out of the dark earth, feeling the sunshine again, and stirred by the breeze that rustled the dry leaves that lay all about him. Here again were all his old companions, — the chipping-birds, his cousins, old grandfather Rubra, and, best of all, his dear mother; but the odd thing about it all was that nobody seemed to know him; even his mother, although she stretched her arms towards him, turned her head away, looking here and there for her lost baby, and never seeing how he stood gazing up into her face. Now he began to understand why the chipping-birds said, “They never came back! they never came back!” for they truly came in so new a form that none of their old friends recognized them.

Everything that has hands wants to work, — that is, hands are such excellent tools that no one who is the happy possessor of a pair is quite happy until he uses them; so Alba began to have a longing desire to build a stem and lift himself up among his neighbors. But what should he build with? Here the little feet answered promptly, “You want to build, — do you? Well, here is carbon, the very best material; there is nothing like it for walls; it makes the most beautiful, firm wood; wait a minute, and we will send up some that we have been storing for your use.”

And the busy hands go to work, and the child grows day by day. His body and limbs are brown now, but his hands of a fine shining green. And, having learned the use of carbon, these busy hands undertake to gather it for themselves out of the air about them, which is a great storehouse full of many materials that our eyes cannot see. And he has also learned that to grow and to build are indeed the same thing; for his body is taking the form of a strong young tree; his branches are spreading for a roof over the heads of a hundred delicate flowers, making a home for many a bushy-tailed squirrel and pleasant-voiced wood-bird; for, you see, whoever builds cannot build for himself alone; all his neighbors have the benefit of his work, and all enjoy it together.

What at the first was so hard to attempt became grand and beautiful in the doing; and little Alba, instead of serving merely for a squirrel’s breakfast, as he might have done had he not bravely ventured on his journey, stands before us a noble tree, which is to live a hundred years or more.

Do you want to know what kind of a tree?

Well, Lillie, who studies Latin, will tell you that Quercus means oak. And now can you tell me what Alba’s rustic cradle was, and who were his cousins Rubra and Coccinea? [2]

P. Freeman Heim. “White Oak.” Photograph, 1971. National Archives at College Park, College Park, MD.
Andrews, Jane. “How Quercus alba went to explore the under-world, and what came of it.” Our Young Folks 4, no. 11 (November 1868): 641-45.

[1] The chipping-bird is likely the chipping sparrow (Spizella passerina), which is common throughout much of North America.

[2] Quercus alba is the white oak, Quercus rubra is the northern red oak, and Quercus coccinea is the scarlet or red oak.

Contexts

In 1897, the Organic Administration Act established much of the national forests in the U.S., with the Weeks Law of 1911 creating more through the restoration of deforested lands. Increased logging for building materials led to additional laws in the 1960s and 70s that would help further protect forests. The U.S. Forest Service’s approaches have not been without controversy, however, and some areas have turned to Native American forest management knowledge to improve the health and longevity of our forest resources.

Resources for Further Study
  • The U.S. Department of Agriculture provides field guides to the native oak species in Eastern North America, which includes the three species mentioned in this story.
  • The Arbor Day Foundation has plentiful tree conservation and education resources, including a statement about the November 2004 naming of the oak as the U.S. national tree.
Contemporary Connections

Margaret Roach’s piece in the New York Times about planting oak trees describes some of the benefits the trees provide for the environment.

Categories
1920s African American Education Family Short Story

The Yellow Tree

The Yellow Tree

By DeReath Byrd Busey
Egon Schiele. Small Tree in Late Autumn. Oil on wood, 1911, Leopold Museum, Vienna, Austria. Public Domain.
Annotations by Rene Marzuk

Plum Street is a firm believer in “signs.” It is not an ordinary street—not even physically, for it begins at Ludlow, stops on Clark where the trolley passes, picks itself up a half block south on Clark and rushes across the railroad straight uphill to the Fair Grounds. In the early nineties it was the thoroughfare for the “southend,” but Jasper Hunley, who bought Lester Snyder’s house at public auction, proved to be a “fair” Negro. Then the Exodus![1] In 1919 Negroes had been in undisputed possession for twenty years.[2]

Like the colors of their faces, the houses vary. There is Jasper Hunley’s big brown house with built-in china cabinet and bookcases, hardwood floors and overstuffed furniture. On either side of him in white houses live the Reverend Burns and Policeman Jenkins in a little less state, with portable furniture sparsely upholstered, and carpets. Across the street lives Mother Stewart and Reverend Gordon in plain barefaced houses with scarred pine furniture.

At the close of the January day, Mary Hunley sat watching at her window for Eva Lou’s home-coming from the office. Again she recalled vividly the June day she had sat with bed-ridden Mother Stewart while Lucy went to market. She had been sitting at the second story window feasting her eyes upon her hardwon home across the street—a big house in a big yard with flowers and young trees in spring garb. The roses were beginning to open. She had smiled contentedly as her eyes lingered on each bush and shrub but a puzzled frown crossed her brow as she noticed her youngest maple had yellowed. She wondered if worms were at its root.

She turned her eyes to gaze down at the Reverend Mr. Gordon, who pulled his broad brimmed hat further over his eyes, squared himself on his bare board bench in the corner of the yard and sank into a revery. Unpainted palings enclosed the tiny grassless yard about his unpainted weather-stained house, distinguished from its neighbors only by a bright blue screen door. The Reverend, tall, broad, his brown face growing darker with age, had lived on Plum street ever since he had been called from the janitorship of the Mecklin Building to the pastorate of the St. Luke’s Baptist Church. He had come to be the oracle of the street.

His dreams were respectfully broken by the greetings of returning marketers. Mary listened idly until Lucy stopped for a conversation. They spoke of the movies and the man there to whom the whole town was flocking for advance information on the future. Lucy thought his amazing replies all a trick. Mr. Gordon concurred.

Mary Vaux Walcott. Carolina Maple. Watercolor on paper, 1923, Smithsonian American Art Museum. Public Domain

“Yet,” he said, “the Lawd do give wahnin’ of things t’come t’them that believes, Miss Lucy. Ah’m not a-tall supstitious but when ah gits a sign ah knows it.”

“Yassuh,” Lucy nodded.

“Las’ yeah,” he continued, “ah says to Mrs. Reveren’ Burns that somebody in that house on the cornuh o’ Clark would die ‘fore spring come agin. She laffed. In Feb’uary the oldest boy died o’ consumption. The new leaves on d’tree in d’front yahd turned yeller. When a tree does that, Miss Lucy, death comes in the fam’ly fore a yeah is gone.”

He paused portentously. Mary Hunley leaned unsteadily closer to the window. He spoke solemnly as he pointed his long finger.

“That tree yonde’ in Jasper Hunley’s yahd turned yeller las’ night. This is June, Miss Lucy. The Lawd do give wahnin’s to them as believes.”

Mary Hunley never knew how she got home. She only knew the Lord had sent her warning. She had always believed in signs—and the few times she had ignored them they had told truth with a vengeance.

When but a girl a circus fortune-teller had drawn a picture of her future husband who should bring money and influence. When Jasper Hunley, carpenter, came a-wooing, his likeness to the picture made the match. She never really loved him, but he was her Fate so they married.

William Bullard. Portrait of Martha (Patsy) Perkins. Photograph, 1901, courtesy of Frank Morrill, Clark University and the Worcester Art Museum. Public Domain.

The first year of her marriage she dreamed three nights that they had moved into a big brown house. When Lester Snyder went bankrupt—Jasper bought the house. They moved in and their neighbors moved out. Racial gregariousness was stronger than economy, so houses went for a song.[3] Enough of them came to Jasper to make him potential potentate of Plum street. But Jasper was slow, not given to show, and contented to be hired.

Mary came to realize that he would only bring the money. She must make the influence. She had received diploma and inspiration from one of those Southern Missionary Schools for colored youth, and she had thoroughly imbibed “money and knowledge will solve the race problem.” [4] In ten years she had made Jasper a contractor. She read, she joined “culture clubs,” she spoke to embroidery clubs on suffrage when it was a much ridiculed subject, she managed Jasper’s business, drew up his contracts, and still found time to keep Eva Lou the best dressed child in Plum street school.

On Plum street as in some other Negro communities color of skin is a determining factor in social position.[5] Mary had cared for that. Jasper was fair and she became fair. From the days of buttermilk and lemon juice to these of scientific “complexion beautifier” she kept watch on herself and Eva Lou.[6] When Eva Lou came back from school in Washington she was whiter and more fashionable than ever; the street wondered, envied, resented.

Gradually Mary grew to feel that the glory of her ambition would come through her daughter. She centered all her love and energies upon Eva Lou—the promise and fulfillment of her life. Occasionally she thought Eva Lou indiscreet in bringing city fashions among small town people, yet she trusted her to have learned on her expensive trips what the great world does. Eva Lou and a few kindred spirits who had ventured far afield—to Chicago and Washington, Boston and New York—had established a clique of those who wore Harper’s Bazaar clothes unadulterated, smoked cigarettes in semi-privacy, and played from house to house. Plum street’s scandalized gossip joyfully reported by Lucy she ascribed to envy. Lucy, black and buxom, hated Eva Lou’s lithe pallor. Mary smiled. Only those in high places are envied.

William Bullard. Portrait of Betty and Willis Coles. Photograph, circa 1902, courtesy of Frank Morrill, Clark University and the Worcester Art Museum. Public Domain.

That June morning as she sat at Mother Stewart’s window, she had breathed a sigh of relief. At last, she could relax. Jasper was a thirty-third degree Mason and Eva Lou was engaged to Sargeant Hawkins of Washington.[7]

Then Gordon’s prophecy smashed in upon her soul. For one panic stricken hour she was filled with terror. But the qualities that had fought for her family for twenty-five years came to her rescue. She knew the prophecy was of Eva Lou. And she who had believed implicitly and fearfully set out to give that yellow tree the lie. She shuddered with dread but she would not retract.

“If I tell Babe,” she reasoned, “wor’y will make her sick. I’ll just have to fight it out alone.”

January was here now. Never a winter before had Eva Lou been so plagued with good advice and flannels. At first she had listened civilly but unheedingly. Finally she firmly refused both. She wore as many as she needed. As for spats and rubber—

“Well, I’ll say not. Pumps ah the thing this wintuh. An’ what if I do cough! Ev’rybody’s got a cold this weathuh. You have yuhself.”

Daily tears did not move her. Fear and a hacking cough were breaking the splendid courage of Mary. Plum street, informed by Lucy, waited the prophecy’s fulfillment in sympathetic certainty.

Down the street Mary saw Dr. Dancey’s car come slowly rolling. She had heard him say flu and pneumonia were rampant again. Suppose Eva should get either! She could not recover. That yellow tree would win and life come crashing to her feet.

“I’ll just have to take care of myself and get rid o’ this grip I have—”[8]

Dr. Dancey was stopping at her door and helping Eva Lou alight.

“O Babe!” Mary cried as she dragged her unwilling body to the door and snatched it open. “Babe, are you sick? Are y’sick?”

Dr. Dancey tried to quiet her. Eva Lou had an attack of grip—nothing more. A hot bath, hot drink, and long night’s sleep would set her right. Mary knew he lied. Grip did not make you look as Babe did. Mary knew for days that the aching limbs and throbbing head she had were signs of grip. When she asked Babe she said she just felt weak.

After Jasper and Eva Lou were asleep, Mary lay in bed and racked her fevered brain for means to thwart the threatening evil. Ah—the sure solution shone clear before her. Her tortured mind felt free and calm. A smile of cunning triumph crept over her face. She eased out of bed, slipped on her flannelette kimono and bedroom slippers. She crept in to look at Babe. She stared, then stooped and kissed the girl’s hot lips. Sweet little Babe! Mother would save her. She raised her head and smiled in calm defiance across the sleeping girl at the shrouded figure of the waiting Death Angel near the window. Not yet would it get her!

She smiled with cunning triumph again at the silent figure. Why didn’t it move? She knew. It was sorry. It had come in vain.

Down the back stairs and into Jasper’s tool room she floated. All pain had left her. Her thinking was clear and her body light as air. As she bent over the tool box she chuckled. She had never felt so certain of success since the day she married Jasper. Softly she drew out the bright, keen saw. In the kitchen she stopped for salt to sprinkle on the ice. She might slip. She floated around the house and to the youngest maple. Carefully she anointed its ice covered trunk and limbs with salt. Every crackle of the melting ice brought joy to her heart. When she felt a bare wet space on the tree she began sawing—haltingly, unrhythmically. Over and over she whispered exultantly.

“The yellow tree lied! The yellow tree lied!”

Once she stopped to wonder why she was not cold, but she was so light and warm it seemed a waste of time. Not even her feet were cold.

The saw was almost through the tree. She raised herself to gloat over its fall.

But it was not a tree. It was that same Angel of Death. The laugh froze in her throat. His face was uncovered and he was smiling. He swayed toward her once —twice. Suppose he should rush over her and get Babe anyway! She laughed now— sweet, carefree. She still would win. She would hold him—if it were forever. The Angel swayed again and fell into her outstretched arms. They held each other.

Early in the morning slow moving Jasper found her there on the ice with the tree over her.

They buried her yesterday. Eva Lou wore white mourning. Lucy, voicing the query of Plum street, asked Reverend Gordon why the yellow tree took the wrong one.

Anne Brigman. The Heart of the Storm. Print, 1914, The J. Paul Getty Museum, LA, Gift of the Michael and Jane Wilson Collection. Public Domain.
BUSEY, DEREATH BYRD. “THE YELLOW TREE: A STORY.” THE CRISIS 24, NO. 6 (OCTOBER 1922): 253-56.

Jun Fujita. Couple Moving During the 1919 Chicago Race Riots. Photographic print, 1919, Chicago History Museum. Public Domain.

[1] A likely reference to the Great Migration (1910-1970), one of the largest movements of people within the United States. Almost six million African American southerners moved to Northern, Midwestern, and Western states to escape racial violence and pursue better opportunities.

[2] In the year 1919, a particularly brutal outburst of violence against African Americans across the United States became what we know now as the Red Summer.

[3] “White flight,” which refers to the movement of white city residents to the suburbs to escape the influx of minorities, explains why racial gregariousness would have caused house prices to drop in African American neighborhoods. Redlining and blockbusting promoted a wave of “white flight” to the suburbs after World War II; however, a new study suggests that “white flight” really started during the first decades of the twentieth century.

[4] During Reconstruction (1863-1877), missionary societies and African Americans established over 3,000 schools in the South for the pubic education of freedmen.

[5] Colorism, which refers to the prejudice against dark skin, is prevalent within African American communities.

[6] In her essay “Black No More: Skin Bleaching and the Emergence of New Negro Womanhood Beauty Culture,” Treva B. Lindsey connects the popularity of bleaching products and procedures in African American communities during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to “perceived and real desires for social mobility and aesthetic valuation within a cultural hierarchy premised upon white cultural supremacy.”

Illustration From a Prince Hall Masonic Convention, 1920. Wikimedia Commons. Public Domain.

[7] Jasper Hunley probably belonged to the Prince Hall Masons, a Masonic lodge for African American men that dates back to 1787. Due to racism and segregation, African Americans could not join most Masonic lodges until the late twentieth century. The thirty-third degree is an honorary Masonic degree.

[8] The grip is a common name for epidemic influenza (flu).

Contexts
Original cover from The Crisis‘ number that included “The Yellow Tree.”

Starting in 1912, the October issues of The Crisis, the official magazine of the NAACP, were dedicated to children. A typical edition of these children’s numbers would contain a special editorial piece and two or three literary works specifically for children, while still including the serious pieces about contemporary issues with a focus on race that The Crisis was known for. These October numbers were sprinkled with children’s photographs sent in by the readers.

In his first editorial for the Children’s number in 1912, W. E. B. Du Bois wrote that “there is a sense in which all numbers and all words of a magazine of ideas myst point to the child—to that vast immortality and wide sweep and infinite possibility which the child represents.”

The success of The Crisis’ children’s number led to the standalone The Brownies’ Book, a monthly magazine for African American children that circulated from January 1920 to December 1921 under the editorship of Du Bois, Augustus Granville Dill, and Jessie Fauset.

According to the Early Black American Playwrights and Dramatic Writers: A Biographical Directory and Catalog of Plays, Films, and Broadcasting Scripts, in the same year The Crisis published “The Yellow Tree” Irene DeReath Busey adapted her short story into a dramatic play produced by the Howard University Players in Washington, DC.

Definitions from Oxford English Dictionary:

exodus: The departure or going out, usually of a body of persons from a country for the purpose of settling elsewhere. Also, the title of the book of the Old Testament which relates the departure of the Israelites out of Egypt.

for a song: For a mere trifle, for little or nothing.

thoroughfare: A passage or way through.

Resources for Further Study
Contemporary Connections

Coates, Ta-Nehisi. “The Case for Reparations.”

Greenidge, Kaitlyn. “Why Black People Discriminate Among Ourselves: The Toxic Legacy of Colorism.”

Hall, Ronald. “Women of Color Spend More Than $8 Billion on Bleaching Creams Worldwide Every Year.”

Categories
1880s Dogs Education Native American Short Story Sketch

The Dog and the Shadow

The Dog and the Shadow

By Anonymous
Annotations by Karen Kilcup
The Old Dog Looks like a Picture. Engraving, 1853, by Thomas Landseer. Courtesy New York Public Library.

A dog, with a piece of meat in his mouth, was crossing a stream on a plank, and saw in the water what he took to be another dog, with a piece of meat twice as large as his own. Letting go what he had, he jumped at the other dog to get the larger piece from him. He thus lost both,–the one he grasped at in the water, because it was a shadow; and his own, because the swift current swept it away.

Moral. Greediness is a bad fault, especially in children. Always avoid it, dear little friends. Be satisfied with the little you have, and never envy or covet the greater possessions of others.

Anonymous. “The Dog and the Shadow.” In “Our Little ONes’ Corner.” The Youth’s Companion 12, no. 1 (May 1882): 304.

Contexts

Begun in 1881, The Youth’s Companion—a name that many nineteenth-century publications shared—was a monthly student magazine that published articles written by pupils of the Catholic-run boarding school located on the Tulalip Indian Reservation. A federally recognized tribe located in the mid-Puget Sound area, the Tulalip Tribes received reservation lands—22,000 acres—in 1855, with its legal boundaries established by President Ulysses S. Grant in 1873. According to the Tulalip Tribes website, “it was created to provide a permanent home for the Snohomish, Snoqualmie, Skagit, Suiattle, Samish, and Stillaguamish Tribes and allied bands living in the region.”

Nineteenth-century Indian boarding schools aimed to assimilate Native Americans into white culture. They separated children from their families, required students to dress like white Americans, and prohibited them from speaking their language. They also emphasized so-called “industrial” training: boys learned agricultural and industrial skills, while girls learned how to cook, sew, and clean a household. Students were often expected to become servants or to provide manual labor help for whites.

Like many contributions to Native American student periodicals, this sketch was published anonymously. Students living on reservations during this time often received educations governed by white religious authorities who emphasized moral training. Student newspapers frequently published work by students, but it’s often difficult to identify authorship even if contributions included the author’s name. The moral that ends the sketch may be an addition by one of the school’s teachers. If an older student wrote the sketch and added the moral, the advice to avoid coveting others’ possessions carries heavy irony, given that settlers appropriated Native lands and belongings from the beginning of the settlement era.

Resources for Further Study
Contemporary Connections

Tulalip History Minute 04—The Tulalip Indian School presented by Mary Jane Topash,” the Tulalip History Project. Provides Tulalip-sponsored background on the tribe.

Editorial: Getting to the truth of Tulalip boarding school,” September 26, 2021, HeraldNet (Everett, Washington). Caution: includes information about abuses at the school.

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