Читать книгу The Seminoles of Florida онлайн

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This white haired relic of Old Virginia is worthy a place in the pages of history. She is old, decrepit and poor, the muscles of her once powerful arms are shrunken and her hands gnarled with the labor of years, but she has a memory as keen as when almost 80 years ago she watched the “stars fall” from the upper windows of the Old Swan Hotel in Richmond. She has kept pace with many points in history, particularly of the wars of the country.

As the old dame—a study in ebony—rocks back and forth in the creaking split-bottom chair, memory runs back to the imperial days of Virginia when the cavalier was supreme, and she the pampered nurse girl of the little mistress. She says, “Oh, dem was dream days. I hab nebber seed any days like ’em since. De mounfulest day I ebber seed was when dey took me from my mistress, for the sky was a drippin’ tears and de wind was a groanin’.”

“No, honey, dey ain’t stories ’bout dem Seminole war days, dey is de Lord’s blessed truf, what ole Marthy see wif dese same ole eyes.