Chapter I · (continued 2)

December 8.

To-day Richard Dinny came to say he would undertake to mend the break in the rice-field bank. As it is about two miles round there in a boat, I had him paddle me through the canal to Long field trunk, and I walked from there on the banks. I hurried along because the time was short before hour for luncheon. I had had the bank hoed just in the middle, so that a sportsman could go through unseen by the ducks in the field. Sometimes it was hard for me to get through with my skirt, but the man found it hard to keep up with me. The break looked very alarming, the water rushing over, and every tide that goes over will double the work.

Coming back, my hair caught in a brier and I found it impossible to disentangle it. I had taken off my big hat early in the engagement and left it on the bank near the boat. After trying desperately to get free from the brier I asked Richard, who was just behind, if he had a knife. He said yes.

"Then cut this bramble," I said, holding well up above my head the brier, which was completely wrapped in my hair.

He got out his knife and took a long time about it, sawing and sawing, but finally I was released. As soon as I got home I rushed upstairs to fix my hair for luncheon, for it is curly and was every which way over my head. As I took it down a lock as thick as my finger came off in my hand. Richard had taken so long because he was sawing off my hair instead of the bramble.

December 9.

Yesterday's work at the break was too much for Richard. This morning he sent word he was called off by important business, so could not come.

December 11.

We are having the most delightful springlike weather. It is a joy to wake up morning after morning and find the same balmy, mild air. The effort to keep the house warm in the cold weather got on my nerves very much, and now I am relaxing and expanding to my own natural condition, which is rather optimistic—one of peace and good-will to the world in general, with a firm faith that things must come right in the end, however difficult and crisscross they may seem.

Went to Casa Bianca to-day. The place is too lovely for words. How any one who has the money and wants a winter home can hesitate to give $10,000 for it I do not see. When it is sold, it will break my heart, but either this place or that must go. This place (Cherokee) has nearly 900 acres, and the house is in perfect order. Besides, it has an ever-flowing artesian well 460 feet deep which throws water above the roof when a smaller pipe is put on,—a reducer, the man who bored the well called it. There is a grove of live oak of about 50 acres.

I often wonder that it should have fallen to my lot to have two such beautiful homes. Altogether if I only had a small certain income, I would not envy the King on his throne.

December 12.

All the sashes up this lovely April morning. I have a man called Jimmie trimming up a little. The vista my dear mother had cut out years ago had grown up, and it is a great pleasure to have it open once more. From the front piazza it opens a view down the river, a beautiful bend, the shining, glimmering water framed by the dark oak branches.

Finally I have put Joe, Ruben, and George to work on the break. After lunch went over in the boat to see their work; they had a fine supply of mud cut, some on the bank and some in the flat. Sent Bonaparte to take over some long plank for them to use inside of puncheons to hold the soft mud.

December 13.

Joe, George, and Ruben working on break. They had to be there at daybreak to catch the low tide. This afternoon I went over in boat to look at the work, and to my delight it is really done, and I believe will last, only every day at low water they must put on a little fresh mud to raise it as it settles.

Oh, this heavenly Indian summer! It is too delightful for words!

Bonaparte had Frankie and Green helping him to clean the chimneys. It is a troublesome business.

Bonaparte goes up on a ladder to the top of the house. It always frightens me to see him, for he is an old man, but he minds it less than the younger ones. He ties a stout cedar bough to a long rope about midway in the rope, then drops it down the chimney the three stories to the first floor; there Frankie catches the rope and between them they pull it backward and forward until the chimney is clean and the hearth is filled with soot.

Once I tried getting a chimney-sweep, but he wept and pleaded so not to go up the chimneys again, saying he would suffocate, they were so long, that I returned to the old and primitive way and will never try the sweep again. After this one sweeping we keep the chimneys clean by burning them, when there is a pouring rain, about once a month.

I have always broken my colts myself; no one but myself either rode or drove Ruth until she was thoroughly broken. Of course Jim's stable discipline was of the utmost importance, and he always went along, but he never touched the reins. I did the driving.

This year, however, I had not the spirit to cope with them and have determined to leave it entirely to him. He is now patching up a harness so as to drive Marietta in the road cart.

NOTE

It may be wise to explain a peculiarity of our low-country rice region. From the last week in May until the first week in November it was considered deadly for an Anglo-Saxon to breathe the night air on a rice plantation; the fatal high bilious fever of the past was regarded as a certain consequence, while the African and his descendants were immune. Hence every rice planter had a summer home either in the mountains, or on the seashore, or in the belt of pine woods a few miles from the river, where perfect health was found. In 1845 my father built a large, airy house surrounded with wide piazzas on Pawley's Island, and there he spent the summer, with occasional trips north and abroad, until the war made it unsafe to occupy the island. Then he built a log house in the pineland village of Peaceville: this large house with double shingled roof was built by his plantation carpenters with wooden pins, owing to the blockade there being no nails to be had. After the war my brother owned this, and my mother in spite of great difficulties returned to the beach as a summer home. As the crow flies this island was about three miles east of Cherokee, but for us mortals to reach it, many miles by land and water had to be traversed—all of our belongings, servants, horses, cows, furniture, were loaded on to lighters and propelled seven miles through broad rivers and winding creeks to Waverly Mills where they were disembarked and travelled four miles by land, but when we reached this paradise on the Atlantic Ocean we felt repaid for all the effort. It was here we spent our summers when I began my rice-planting venture. As my mother reached the limit which David places for the span of life, she shrank from the long move and bought a house in Peaceville just opposite the church and here the last beautiful summers of her life were passed in peaceful serenity.