To each pair, man and wife, or two children, was given a new wool blanket. This was, of course, added to the stock each house had already. A woolen blanket was good for ten years' wear. Many a servant's house had a dozen blankets for each bed. Besides the blankets, to every woman with a baby was given a quilted comfort.
To each man, woman and child were allotted two complete woolen suits for the winter, a new pair of shoes and three pairs of stockings. In the spring two suits of cotton would be given for summer. The thrifty ones had their cedar chests piled with clothes. Many had not worn the suits given out a year ago.
The heads of large families trudged away with six or seven blankets, a comfort, and twenty suits of clothes. It sometimes took the father, mother and two of the children to carry the load.
But the most amazing thing which Phil saw was the sudden transformation of the shed into a market for the sale of slave produce to the mistress of Arlington.
Mrs. Lee had watched the distribution of clothes, blankets, quilts, shoes and stockings for the winter and then became the purchaser of all sorts of little luxuries which the slave had made in his leisure hours on Saturday afternoons and at night. The little boys and girls sold her dried wild fruits. The women had made fine jellies. They all had chickens and eggs to sell to the big house. Some had become experts in making peanut brittle and fudge.
They not only sold their wares here, but they also sold them in the market in Washington. The old men were expert basket and broom makers. The slaves made so much extra money on their chickens, peanuts, popcorn, fudge, brittle, molasses cakes, baskets, brooms, mats and taking in sewing, that they were able to buy many personal luxuries. Phil observed one dusky belle already arrayed in a silk dress for the Saturday afternoon outing with her beau. A few of them had their Sunday dresses made by fashionable mantua makers in Washington.
In addition to the regular distribution of clothing, the household supplied to the servants in rapid succession everything worn by master, mistress, son or daughter. Knowing that their clothes were being watched and guarded by longing eyes, they never wore them very long. Mary Lee was distributing a dozen dresses now to the girls. They had been made within the past year.
Phil observed Sam arrayed in a swallowtail coat of immaculate cut stroll by with his best girl. She was dressed in silk with full hoop-skirts, ruffles, ribbons and flowers.
Sid annoyed Sam by calling loudly:
"Doan yer stay too late ter dat party. Ef ye do I'll hatter sing fur ye—
"Run, nigger, run, de patterole ketch you.
Nigger run, de nigger flew,
De nigger loss his best ole shoe!
Run, nigger, run. Run, nigger, run. Run, nigger, run."
Sam waved his arm in a long laugh.
"Dey won't git me, chile. I'se er conjur man, I is!"
Phil had supposed the patrol of the mysterious mounted police of the South—the men who rode at night—were to the slave always a tragic terror.
It seemed a thing for joke and ribald song.
After lunch, the negroes entered on the afternoon's fun or work. The industrious ones plied their trades to earn money for luxuries. The boys who loved to fish and hunt rabbits hurried to the river and the fields. There was always a hound at their service for a rabbit hunt on Saturday afternoons. Some were pitching horse shoes. Two groups began to play marbles.
The marketing done for the house, the mistress of Arlington, with medicine case in hand, started on her round of healing for body and mind. Mary offered to go with her but the mother saw Stuart hovering about and quietly answered:
"No. You can comfort poor Jeb. He looks disconsolate."
Into every cottage she moved, a quiet, ministering angel. Every hope and fear of ailing young or old found in her an ear to hear, a heart to pity and an arm to save.
If she found a case of serious illness, a doctor was called and a nurse set to watch by the bedside. Every delicacy and luxury the big house held was at the command of the sufferer and that without stint.
In all these clean flower-set cottages there was not a single crippled servant maimed in the service of his master. No black man or woman was allowed to do dangerous work. All dangerous tasks were done by hired white laborers. They were hired by the day under contract through their boss. Even ditches on the farm if they ran through swamp lands infested by malaria, were dug by white hired labor. The master would not permit his slave to take such risks.
But the most important ministry of the mistress of Arlington was in the medicine for the soul which she brought to the life and character of each servant for whose training she had accepted responsibility.
To her even the master proudly and loyally yielded authority. Her sway over the servants was absolute in its spiritual power. Into their souls in hours of trial she poured the healing and inspiration of a beautiful spirit. The mistress of Arlington was delicate and frail in body. But out of her physical suffering the spirit rose to greater heights with each day's duty and service.
This mysterious power caught the warm imagination of the negroes. They were "servants" to others. They were her slaves and they rejoiced in the bond that bound them. They knew that her body had no rest from morning until far into the hours of the night if one of her own needed care. The master could shift his responsibility to a trained foreman. No forewoman could take her place. To the whole scheme of life she gave strength and beauty. The beat of her heart made its wheels go round.
The young Westerner studied her with growing admiration and pity. She was the mistress of an historic house. She was the manager of an estate. She was the counselor of every man, woman and child in happiness or in sorrow. She was an accomplished doctor. She was a trained nurse. She taught the hearts of men and women with a wisdom more profound and searching than any preacher or philosopher from his rostrum. She had mastered the art of dressmaking and the tailor's trade. She was an expert housekeeper. She lived at the beck and call of all. She was idolized by her husband. Her life was a supreme act of worship—a devotion to husband, children, friends, the poor, the slave that made her a high-priestess of humanity.
The thing that struck Phil with terrific force was that this beautiful delicate woman was the slave of slaves.
As a rule, they died young.
He began to wonder how a people of the intelligence of these proud white Southerners could endure such a thing as Slavery. Its waste, its extravagance, its burdens were beyond belief.
He laughed when he thought of his mother crying over Uncle Tom's Cabin. Yet a new edition of a hundred thousand copies had just come from the press.
Early Sunday morning Custis asked him to go down to the quarters to see Uncle Ben, the butler, who had not yet resumed his duties. He had sent an urgent message to his young master asking him to be kind enough to call on Sunday. The message was so formal and reserved Custis knew it was of more than usual importance.
They found the old man superintending a special breakfast of fried fish for two little boys, neatly served at a table with spotless cloth. Robbie and his friend, John Doyle, were eating the fish they had caught with Uncle Ben the day before. They were as happy as kings and talked of fish and fishing with the unction of veteran sportsmen.
The greeting to Custis was profound in its courtesy and reverence. He was the first born of the great house. He was, therefore, the prospective head of the estate. Jeffersonian Democrats had long ago abolished the old English law of primogeniture. But the idea was in the blood of the Virginia planter. The servants caught it as quickly as they caught the other English traits of love of home, family, kin, the cult of leisure, the habit of Church, the love of country. It was not an accident that the decisions of the courts of the Old South were quoted by English barristers and accepted by English judges as law. The Common Law of England was the law of Southern Seaboard States. It always had been and it is to-day.
"How