The happiest smile
glorified the kind old withered face, and the wrinkled hands lay crossed
and still on her breast. She had truly met the husband of her youth, and
God had opened in death the eyes so darkened in life.
My Fifth in Mammy
By William Ludwell Sheppard
I never knew a time in which I did not know Mammy. She was simply a part of
my consciousness; it seems to me now a more vivid one in my earliest years
than that of the existence of my parents. We five, though instructed by an
elder sister in the rudiments of learning, spent many more of our waking
hours with Mammy; and whilst we drew knowledge from one source, we derived
the greater part of our pleasure from the other--that is, outside of our
playmates.
The moments just preceding bedtime, in which we were undergoing the process
of disrobing at the hands of Mammy, were periods of dreadful pleasure to
us. As I look back upon them, I wonder that we got any sleep at all after
some of her recitals. They were not always sanguinary or ghostly, and of
course when I scan them in the light of later years, it is apparent that
Mammy, like the majority of people, "without regard to color or previous
condition of servitude," suffered her walk and conversation to be
influenced by her state of health, mental and bodily.
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