Questions which were difficult to others were often solved
to her mind by practical observation. It amused her to hear persons
agitating the question as to where they should look to supply labor
for the South. "Why," she remarked once, "there was a negro, one of
those fearfully hot days in the spring, who was digging muck from a
swamp just in front of our house, and carrying it in a wheelbarrow up
a steep slope, where he dumped it down, and then went back for more.
He kept this up when it was so hot that we thought either one of us
would die to be five minutes in the sun. We carried a thermometer to
the spot where he was working, to see how great the heat was, and it
rose at once to one hundred and thirty-five degrees. The man, however,
kept cheerfully at his work, and when he went to his dinner sat with
the other negroes out in the white sand without a bit of shade.
Afterward they all lay down for a nap in the same unsheltered
locality. Toward evening, when the sun was sufficiently low to enable
me to go out, I went to speak to this man. 'Martin,' said I, 'you've
had a warm day's work. How do you stand it? Why, I couldn't endure
such heat for five minutes.' 'Hoh! hoh! No, I s'pose you couldn't.
Ladies can't, missus.' 'But, Martin, aren't you very tired?' 'Bress
your heart, no, missus.' So Martin goes home to his supper, and after
supper will be found dancing all the evening on the wharf near by!
After this, when people talk of bringing Germans and Swedes to do such
work, I am much entertained.
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