by Various
Clarence, much pleased at his hearty reception, promised to do his best to please the good doctor.
After giving directions as to how he wanted things “rubbed up,” and charging him to be careful, he went out, leaving the boy feeling very strange and queer. He set to work, however—clumsily enough, to be sure, at first, but with the determination to do his best to give satisfaction.
Meanwhile, Corinne had gone with Miss Penrose. “Miss Rachel Penrose, Seamstress,” was the announcement the plate on her door made to the passers-by. Miss Rachel was a spinster who supported herself by her needle. Not that she was wholly dependent upon it for a living; for besides owning the house in which she lived and the cottage in which the Burtons had lived, she had a snug sum of money in the savings bank. As she was a good seamstress, she had a large run of custom and was well paid for her work.
But Miss Rachel was stingy. “Saving” was her besetting sin. Now the habit of saving, when exercised wisely and properly, is a virtue; but when saving means depriving one’s self, and others, of the actual necessities of life, in order to lay away money for the sake of simply possessing, then it becomes a vice.
It had become so with Miss Rachel. Every cent she spent was parted with as though it were a drop of blood, without which she could not possibly survive. She counted her coals, she counted the potatoes, she meted out everything with the smallest measurement possible. A bright fire, in her opinion, was a waste, and enough to eat entirely unnecessary.
Such was the woman with whom our little friend Corinne had found a home. The child had led an idle, useless life. Her mother had made no effort whatever to train her in any way. Indeed, she had paid but little attention to her children since their earliest years. She had given way altogether to despondency, and had lost all energy and ambition, doing hardly anything, save to sit and brood bitterly and rebelliously over the fate that had shut out from her the light of happiness. Had Mrs. Burton been a Christian she would not have done so, but would have sought to rear her boy and girl properly, and would have striven to accept her lot at least cheerfully. But she was not a Christian, and, therefore, lived as one without hope. She had been born and reared in the country, but had been early deprived of her parents. She had been cared for by strangers, and had grown to be a giddy, thoughtless girl. She had met and formed the acquaintance of James Burton; and although she well knew that he was given to hard drinking, she married him. There had been friendly people who had advised her to do otherwise, and had warned her of the dangers before her; but she was headstrong, and so chose her own way and found it full of thorns. She had thought she knew best, and cherished many bright hopes for a happy future. But alas! like the man in the Lord’s sermon, she had built upon the sand. And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon her house; and it fell, and great was the fall of it.
When she could, she would not hear; and when she saw her bright prospects slipping from her she had nothing to cling to—no hope in this world nor in the world to come. Was it any wonder, then, that she had drifted into the wretched creature she became? With their two little children, the unhappy couple left their country home and came to N——to live in the old cottage, which was only fit to be torn down. For this they paid but little, but more than the place was worth; its owner saw to that. Proud and mortified, Mrs. Burton had shut herself up, alone with her wretchedness, and had repelled all attempts on the part of her neighbors to befriend her. To pay the bit of house rent was now pretty much the extent of James Burton’s provision for his family; and so it was but a short while before the abused and despondent wife lost all care as to whether things were kept in order or not. The children went to school as long as their clothes lasted; and, be it said to her credit, their mother did mend and fix over their scanty wardrobe as long as it could be done, and some of the hottest battles between the wretched pair were fought that she might obtain decent clothing for them. But she wearied of the struggle at last, and the garments had become so worn that they were no longer fit to wear to school, especially as the more favored but cruelly thoughtless children had taken advantage of this to nickname the brother and sister “ragamuffins”; and so they went to school no more. Clarence did odd jobs whenever he could get them to do, and but for this the lot of his mother and Corinne would have been even harder than it was.
These were the surroundings amid which Corinne Burton had passed her young life. It is but natural to conclude that it was a sudden change from such a home as I have already described to one where everything was as prim and orderly as its prim mistress.
Miss Rachel Penrose had had a girl to do her housework, but she had been taken ill, and had gone to her home just previous to the death of Mrs. Burton. It was on the day when Miss Rachel had gone to the cottage at the request of Mrs. Greene, that she conceived the idea of supplying the place of her former maid-of-all-work with the homeless little Corinne, persuading herself into the belief that she was very benevolent and charitable to take a motherless child and provide her with a home and food, which she would pay for by the help she would render in her home.
33
MARY E. ASHE LEE
(1850–1932)
Mary E. Ashe Lee was born in Mobile, Alabama, and moved to Wilberforce, Ohio, in 1858. Her work was widely read and praised in its time; Gertrude Mossell, for example, wrote that Ashe Lee “has, by her intelligence and sympathy, done much to inspire the students of that University with a love for the broad culture, true refinement and high moral aims . . . and by her contributions of verse.”
Ashe Lee’s poem Afmerica recounts the historical experience of the archetypal African American woman. Like Katherine Tillman’s poetry, Afmerica carves a space in American history that is distinctly black and female. Ashe Lee looks back to her ancestors from a position of triumph, urging readers to never forget that blacks suffered for centuries at the hands of their countrymen in order to achieve their present circumstances.
“Afmerica” (1885)
SOURCE: Mary E. Ashe Lee, “Afmerica,” A.M.E. Church Review (July 1885).
Hang—up the harp! I hear them say,
Nor sing again an Afric lay,
The time has passed; we would forget—
And sadly now do we regret
There still remains a single trace
Of that dark shadow of disgrace,
Which tarnished long a race’s fame
Until she blushed at her own name;
And now she stands unbound and free,
In that full light of liberty.
“Sing not her past!” cries out a host,
“Nor of her future stand and boast.
Oblivion be her aimed-for goal,
In which to cleanse her ethnic soul,
And coming out a creature new,
On life’s arena stand in view.”
But stand with no identity?
All robbed of personality
Perhaps, this is the nobler way
To teach that wished-for brighter day.
Yet shall the good which she has done
Be silenced all and never sung?
And shall she have no inspirations
To elevate her expectations?
From singing I cannot refrain.
Please pardon this my humble strain.
With cheeks as soft as roses are,
And yet as brown as chestnuts dark;
And eyes that borrow from a star
A tranquil, yet a brilliant spark;
Or face of olive, with a glow
Of carmine on the lip and cheek;
The hair in wavelets falling low,
With jet or hazel eyes, that speak;
Or brow of pure Caucasian hue,
With auburn or with flaxen hair;
And eyes that beam in liquid blue,
A perfect type of Saxon fair,�
�
Behold this strange, this well-known maid,
Of every hue, of every shade!
We find this maiden everywhere,—
From wild and sun-kissed Mexico
To where the Rocky Mountains rear
Their snow-peaked heads in Idaho.
From East to West, she makes her home;
From Carolina’s pine-clad State,
Across the plains, she still doth roam
To California’s golden gate.
Yet roaming not as gypsy maid,
Nor as the savage red-man’s child,
But seeking e’er the loving shade
Of home and civil habits mild.
A daughter of futurity,
The problem of the age is she.
And why should she be strange to-day?
Why called the problem of the age?
Not so when slavery held its sway,
And she was like a bird in cage.
She was a normal creature then,
And in her true allotted place;
Giving her life to fellow-men,
A proud and avaricious race.
But now, a child of liberty,
Of independent womanhood,
The world in wonder looks to see
If in her there is any good;
If this new child, Afmerica,
Can dwell in free Columbia.
“’Twas mercy brought me here,” said one,
E’en Phillis Wheatly, child of song,
Who, born beneath an Afric sun,
In her kind mistress found no wrong.
Though maid and mistress, they were true
Companions, both in mind and heart,
No sad impression Phillis knew,
She was content to play her part,
In her is found the purest type
of Afric intellectual might,
Which fast will grow and soon will ripe,
When nourished by the Christian light.
’Tis like Egyptian wheat that slept
In mummy graves, while ages crept.
When first America began
To give the world a nation new,
Then this strange child, called African,
Began to make her history, too,
In New York’s Knickerbocker days,
As she would in the corner sit,
She sang with glee her cheerful lays,
And joined the family’s mirth and wit.
New England even took her in
As servile at her own fireside;
But when convinced that it was sin,
And wounding to a Christian’s pride,
To hold a fellow-man in chains,
She washed her hands from slavery’s stains.
The warm affections of her heart,
Her patience and fidelity,
Adapted her in every part
A Washington’s fit nurse to be.
And other children, too, of state
Were nurtured on her trustful breast;
Their wants she would alleviate
And solace them when in distress.
Full well she filled her humble sphere
As cook or drudge or ladies’ maid;
For all the varied household care
Was on her docile shoulders laid;
While in ennui her mistress fair
Was burdened with herself to bear.
Her lot grew harder year by year;
For she was called from household care,
And forced within the fields t’appear,
The labor of the men to share.
In purple fields of sugarcane,
At early morn, her task began
In regions of the Pontchartrain,
She did the hardy work of men
From Florida to Maryland,
In cotton, rice, and fields of corn.
Such work as calls for masculine hands,
All weary, overtasked, and worn,
Subdued, she was compelled to do.
She helped in clearing forests, too.
The cultivation through her toil,
The literal labor of her hands,
Brought to perfection Southern soil
And swelled the commerce of those lands.
But as she toiled she prayed and longed
For freedom and for womanhood.
No Jewess, when in Goshen wronged,
In trusting God e’er firmer stood
Than sad Afmerica, who, through
The thick’ning of the midnight gloom,
Looked steadfast on the North Star true,
And knew Jehovah held her doom.
So thus for twice a century
She sang the song of jubilee.
Nor did she wait on God in vain.
No disappointment comes to those
Who ever strong in faith remain
And in God’s confidence repose.
At last, a signal crisis came.
When on the first of sixty three
Brave Lincoln made the bold proclaim:
’Twas but a war necessity,
Which Heaven did potentiate,
That he on that day did decree
In every fighting Southern State
Afmerica forever free.
God wrought this glorious victory,
Triumphant swelled the Jubilee.
Well did she use her chances few,
Each opportunity she prized
As silvery drops of falling dew,
Sent to her from benignant skies.
So freedom found her not without
Fair education in the North.
In Southern cities, too, no doubt
Her acquisitions proved her worth.
In many of her homes were found
Refinement true, and some degree
Of culture there, too, did abound,
Ere she was absolutely free.
Her small one talent was not hid,
Whate’er she found to do she did.
O turbulent America!
So mixed and intermixed, until
Throughout this great Columbia
All nationalities at will
Become thine own, thy legal heirs,—
Behold, this colored child is thine!
Deny it, if there’s one who dares,
Amid these glaring facts that shine
Upon the face of this ripe age.
As history doth record thy good,
We trace these facts on every page,—
These facts cry out like Abel’s blood;
And “I am vengeance,” saith the Lord;
“I will repay.” Here his own word.
This hardest of all problems hard,
Which baffles wit of every school
And further progress doth retard,
Is solved but by the Golden rule.
Be calm and think, sublimity—
Have ye not learned, America?—
Is only sweet simplicity.
Cease working out Afmerica;
Most simple and sublime is truth.
A truth divine points out to you
The duty owed e’en from thy youth;
One which you need not solve, but do.
Acknowledge and protect thy child,
Regard her not as strange or wild.
Afmerica! her home is here;
She wants or knows no other home;
No other lands, nor far nor near,
Can charm or tempt her thence to roam.
Her destiny is marked out here.
&
nbsp; Her ancestors, like all the rest,
Came from the eastern hemisphere:
But she is native of the west.
She’ll lend a hand to Africa,
And in her elevation aid.
But here in brave America
Her home, her only home, is made.
No one has power to send her hence;
This home was planned by Providence.
Whatever other women do
In any sphere of busy life,
We find her, though in numbers few,
Engaged heroic in the strife.
In song and music, she can soar;
She writes, she paints and sculptures well:
The fine arts seem to smile on her.
In elocution, she’ll excel;
In medicine, she has much skill.
She is an educator, too;
She lifts her voice against the still.
To Christ she tries man’s soul to woo.
In love and patience, she is seen
In her own home, a blessed queen.
O ye, her brothers, husbands, friends,
Be brave, be true, be pure and strong!
For on your manly strength depends
Her firm security from wrong.
Oh, let her strong right arm be bold!
And don that lovely courtesy
Which marked the chevaliers of old.
Buttress her home with love and care;
Secure her those Amenities
Which make a woman’s life most dear;
Give her your warmest sympathies:
Thus high her aspirations raise
For nobler deeds in coming days.
34
H. CORDELIA RAY
(1849–1916)
Henrietta Cordelia Ray was born in New York City into a prominent abolitionist family: her father, Charles B. Ray, was editor and publisher of the Colored American; her mother, Henrietta Green Ray, was the first president of the New York Female Literary Society and co-founder of the African Dorcas Association, which provided supplies to students in the African Free Schools in New York City. Cordelia (her preferred name) graduated from the City University of New York in 1891 and taught in the New York City public school system. She first came to national attention when her poem “Lincoln” was read at the unveiling of the Freedmen’s Monument to Abraham Lincoln in Washington, D.C., on April 14, 1876, just before an address by Frederick Douglass. Less well known today, she was praised by Elizabeth Frazier in “Some Afro-American Women of Mark” (1892) as “a woman full of savoir-faire, [who] stands among our able women writers, not only in poetry, but in prose, excelling in poetry in the sonnet, in prose critical literature.” Gertrude Mossell said of Ray that she “has won for herself a place in the front rank of our literary workers.”