CHRISTMAS ON A LOUISIANA SUGAR

PLANTATION

GRACE KING

GRACE ELIZABETH KING (1859- ), an American novelist and short-story writer, was born in New Orleans. She has portrayed the Creole life of her native city with sympathy and with fidelity.

The work of the year is over. The cane crop has been made into sugar. The corn is stored in its cribs. The tired mules are turned loose in the pasture. The great cane carts are tilted under the sugar sheds; the plows are ranged in their coverts ; 10 hoes, spades, and cane knives are returned to the tool house. The blacksmith's fire has gone out; the carpenter shop is empty; the doors of the sugarhouse are closed and locked; its brilliant pageantry of light, work, and noise has passed like 15 a dream.

Christmas is here; the work of last year is over, the work of next year not yet begun. God's truce for rest and good cheer reigns upon the plantation. In the master's mansion, with the lordly pillars, 20 the domestics for a week past have been hurrying hither and thither, cleaning, scouring, killing, and cooking, preparing for the feast. And for a week

past there have been sweeping and scouring and washing of clothes in the negro quarters, and a laying out of good things for their feast. The pigsties are silent, their squealers are hanging white and clean by their hind legs, with a corn- 5 cob between their grinning jaws. Against the walls of the cabin hang bunches of squirrels or a coon. The molasses jug is filled, the corn meal tub is brimming with freshly ground meal, the savory smell of cracknels and fresh lard is in the 10 air. While the stars come out in the clear, dark sky, hanging so low over the flat country that the tall tops of the old live oaks seem almost to touch them, from the master's house comes the sound of piano playing, from the negro quarters 15 that of the tinkling of the banjo, from both the singing of the joyous voices and the gleeful stamp of the dancing. But long after the great mansion has turned out its light and gone into the silence of sleep and darkness do the negro quarters keep 20 up their frolic. They waste not their holiday in sleeping, merrymaking is rest enough for them. Before they have finished hailing the advent of Christmas the level rays of the newly risen sun have lifted the darkness from the land and Christ- 25 mas is upon them. In old times, as the not very

distant period of a lifetime ago is called, the humble little cabins of the quarters looked upon the great house of the master as the house of the master looked upon the house of its Master above the 5 skies, each one in due order of dependence and gratitude for the blessings of this life, the blessings of the other one were free, as they knew, to all alike. In those days, after the great house had breakfasted, a pretty procession indeed would be 10 seen wending its sauntering way from the quarters,

-old grannies and daddies who never left their cabins but this once during the year, hobbling along with their closely linked generations trailing behind them, to the last wee baby in arms, all in their 15 Sunday clothes and cleanliness, coming to pay their respects to the master and mistress. And in the expression of sentiment that accompanied this function a seemingly illimitable credit with divine providence was drawn upon: "God bless you, 20 master and mistress, and God bless all your chil

dren." "God bless you, Jerry "; "God bless you, my good old Nancy." To the babies were given bright silver picayunes to string about their necks; to the other children apples and sticks of peppermint 25 candy. The women received their dollar piece and calico dress; the men tobacco, with here a shirt,

there a knife, fishing tackle, spectacles, or the gratification of any little secret wish the cun

But to the

But to the parson

suit of black cloth

ning mistress had ferreted out. always was given an annual 5 from the master's wardrobe. And while the mistress whispered to the women about their babies, or to the buxom young girls about their weddings to come off in Christmas week, and the black and white children and their dogs fraternized in the 10 yards over their "goodies," the master and the

men would stand together and look over the farspreading fields lying bare and yellow in the sun, and they would talk of the crop they had just harvested, and of the crop they hoped to make by 15 next Christmas, "God willing." God, the master, and the "hands," that was the style of the old

plantation partnership.

And as they stood thus on the great columned gallery, the master and his hands, looking out upon 20 the generous soils glistening in the sun, talking of

their past work and next year's hopes, what an historical enterprise they represent! What a capitalization of life and energy-three good generations of it!

25 In a corner of the plantation burying ground

they all now sleep together, the first master and