I was able to purchase material and apparel. But what was
I to paint, and where to sell the product? My hand was out, I discovered,
so I set to studying still life, and painting those of my friends who had
the patience to sit.
I would have gone back to my old haunts in New York but for the material
reason that my funds were too low, and the sentimental one that I not only
was not in the humor for appealing to citizens of that section for
patronage, but was not sure that it would not be withheld, from an
analogous state of mind towards me.
Summer ran into fall. Mammy's visits increased in frequency, and her
conversation drifted towards the difficulties of living.
I had long ago discharged all of her claims for material and repairs, but I
noticed a tendency on her part to prepare my mind for a regular subsidy. I
ignored these hints because it was impossible for me to carry out Mammy's
plan, and painful for me to say so.
She approached the matter in a different way finally, and said, one day:
"Mahs William, you been cayin' on yo' fif' for some time now. Doan you
think it's time for some of the yothers to look after them?"
I suggested that the whole family was about on a parity financially; that
one brother was drifting in the trans-Mississippi, another living more
precariously than I was.
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