ELA Anthology – 7th Grade – Student Edition

Grade/
Unit
Text Title
Author/Source
Notes
Page
Numbers
7.1
The Giver
Lois Lowry
No Link
Not Included
--
7.1
“Preamble”
Constitution of the United
States
7.1
“Newbery Acceptance Speech, June 1994”
Lois Lowry
7.1
7.1
7.1
7.1
7.1
7.1
The Hunger Games
“The Reaping”
“The Human Abstract”
“Harrison Bergeron”
“The Road Not Taken”
The Hunger Games
Clip of “The Reaping”
“Imagine”
Suzanne Collins
Gary Ross
Peter Weir
7.1
Maze Runner
James Dashner
7.1
Unwind
Neal Shusterman
7.1
The Hunger Games
Suzanne Collins
7.1
Divergent
Veronica Roth
7.1
Uglies
Scott Westerfeld
7.1
Feed
M.T. Anderson
7.1
1984
George Orwell
7.2
Written in Bone: Buried Lives of Jamestown and
Colonial Maryland
“Ode to the Virginian Voyage”
Blood on the River: James Town, 1607
Chapters 9-13, 18, 20, first section of 21, 23 to 27, and
Afterword
7.2
“Pocahontas”
7.2
“Indian”
7.2
7.2
7.2
Sally M. Walker
Non-Print
Not Included
William Makepeace
Thackeray
Rosemary and Stephen
Vincent Benét
“Jamestown: 1607, The First Months: Observations
Gathered Out of a Discourse on the Plantation of the
Southern Colony in Virginia by the English, 1606,
Gentleman”
“The Experiences of an Indentured Servant in Virginia,
1623”
“Forensic Anthropology”
1
Master George Percy
(National Humanities
Center)
Richard Frethorne (History
Matters)
Department of
Anthropology, The
University of Tennessee,
Knoxville
--
-12
Non-Print
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Independent
Reading
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Independent
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Independent
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Independent
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Independent
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Independent
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No Link
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Michael Drayton
Elisa Carbone
--
5
6 - 10
11
John Lennon
The Truman Show
7.2
Link Inoperable
Not Included
No Link
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William Blake
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
Robert Frost
7.1
7.2
4
---------13 - 14
No Link
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-15 - 16
17
18 - 22
23 - 24
25 - 26
Grade/
Unit
Text Title
Author/Source
Notes
7.2
“Finding Remains”
Smithsonian’s National
Museum of Natural History
7.2
“30,000 Skeletons”
Smithsonian Education
7.3
A Christmas Carol or here (non-leveled or adapted
version)
Charles Dickens
7.3
Reader’s Theater Play of A Christmas Carol
SCOPE Magazine, Scholastic
7.3
Live drama or filmed version of A Christmas Carol
(example)
7.3
Audio of A Christmas Carol
Non-Print
Not Included
Non-Print
Not Included
Excessive
Length
Not Included
PDF
Not Included
Non-Print
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Non-Print
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PDF
Not Included
7.3
7.3
7.3
7.3
7.3
7.3
7.3
Original manuscript of A Christmas Carol with
Dickens’s revisions
“The Gift of the Magi”
“The Treasure of Lemon Brown”
“Charles Dickens: Six Things He Gave the Modern
World”
“History of Christmas”
“Study: Experiences Make Us Happier Than
Possessions”
“Do Experiences or Material Goods Make Us
Happier?”
7.3
Tuesdays with Morrie
7.4
“How to Write a Memoir”
7.4
7.4
7.4
“Eleven”
“Oranges”
“Thank You M’am”
Peter Pan
Chapter 17: “When Wendy Grew Up”
The Elements of Style (Illustrated)
“Chapter V: An Approach to Style”
“Short Memoirs: Six Little Words Can be Revealing”
7.4
7.4
7.4
Lit2Go
7.4
“Advice from Stephen King”
7.4
“Advice for Writers”
7.4
“Seventh Grade”
The New York Times
--------
O. Henry
Walter Dean Myers
27 - 30
31 - 36
Alex Hudson (BBC News)
37 - 39
BBC
Elizabeth Landau
(CNNHealth.com)
40 - 41
ScienceDaily
44
42 - 43
“The Eighth Tuesday: We
Talk About Money”
William Zinsser (The
American Scholar)
Sandra Cisneros
Gary Soto
Langston Hughes
45 - 47
48 - 53
54 - 55
56 - 57
58 - 60
J.M. Barrie
Not Included
--
William Strunk, Jr. and E.B.
White
Doug Mason
No Link
Not Included
--
Stephen King
Rick Riordan
(RickRiordan.com)
Gary Soto
7.4
A Summer Life
Gary Soto
7.4
At the End of Words: A Daughter’s Memoir
Miriam Stone
7.4
Bad Boy: A Memoir
Walter Dean Myers
7.4
Chinese Cinderella
Adeline Yen Mah
7.4
The Circuit
Francisco Jimenez
2
Page
Numbers
61 - 62
Non-Print
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Non-Print
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--63 - 66
Independent
Reading
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Independent
Reading
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Independent
Reading
Not Included
Independent
Reading
Not Included
Independent
Reading
Not Included
-----
--
Grade/
Unit
Text Title
Author/Source
7.4
Guts
Gary Paulsen
7.4
Growing Up
Russell Baker
7.4
Persepolis
Marjane Satrapi
7.4
Stitches
David Small
7.4
Zlata’s Diary
Zlata Filipovic
7.5
7.5
7.5
7.5
7.5
7.5
7.5
7.5
7.5
7.5
7.5
Behind the Scenes, Or Thirty Years a Slave and Four
Years in the White House
Preface, Chapters Three-Four, excerpts from Chapters
Five-Seven, Chapters Eight-Twelve, and excerpts from
Chapter Fifteen and the Appendix
“The People Could Fly”
Harriet Tubman: Conductor on the Underground
Railroad
Excerpt
“O Captain! My Captain!”
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an
American Slave
Excerpt from Chapter 11
Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman
“Letter from Frederick Douglass to Harriet Tubman,
1868”
“The Great Escape from Slavery of Ellen and William
Craft”
Chasing Lincoln’s Killer
Introductory front matter, Prologue, and Chapters I-II
“Notable Visitors: Frederick Douglass”
“A Fitting Friendship Between Dressmaker and
Mary Todd Lincoln,”
“Mary Todd Lincoln – Mini Biography,” “Mary Todd
Lincoln – The White House,” and “Mary Todd Lincoln –
Influence Peddler”
3
Elizabeth Keckley
Notes
Independent
Reading
Not Included
Independent
Reading
Not Included
Independent
Reading
Not Included
Independent
Reading
Not Included
Independent
Reading
Not Included
Not Included
Virginia Hamilton
Ann Petry
Page
Numbers
--
--
--
--
--
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67 - 68
No Link
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Walt Whitman
69
Frederick Douglass
70 - 76
Sarah Hopkins Bradford
77
Marian Smith Holmes
(SmithsonianMag.com)
78 - 79
James L. Swanson
No Link
Not Included
--
Mr. Lincoln’s White House
80 - 83
Jeanne Kolker
84 - 85
Biography.com
Link Inoperable
Not Included
--
“Preamble”
Constitution of the United States
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure
domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the
Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the
United States of America.
4
“The Human Abstract”
by William Blake
Pity would be no more
If we did not make somebody Poor;
And Mercy no more could be
If all were as happy as we.
And mutual fear brings peace,
Till the selfish loves increase:
Then Cruelty knits a snare,
And spreads his baits with care.
He sits down with holy fears,
And waters the grounds with tears;
Then Humility takes its root
Underneath his foot.
Soon spreads the dismal shade
Of Mystery over his head;
And the Catterpiller and Fly
Feed on the Mystery.
And it bears the fruit of Deceit,
Ruddy and sweet to eat;
And the Raven his nest has made
In its thickest shade.
The Gods of earth and sea
Sought thro’ Nature to find this Tree;
But their search was all in vain:
There grows one in the Human Brian.
5
HARRISON BERGERON
by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
THE YEAR WAS 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren't only equal before God and the law.
They were equal every which way. Nobody was smarter than anybody else. Nobody was better looking
than anybody else. Nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else. All this equality was due to the
211th, 212th, and 213th Amendments to the Constitution, and to the unceasing vigilance of agents of
the United States Handicapper General.
Some things about living still weren't quite right, though. April for instance, still drove people crazy by
not being springtime. And it was in that clammy month that the H-G men took George and Hazel
Bergeron's fourteen-year-old son, Harrison, away.
It was tragic, all right, but George and Hazel couldn't think about it very hard. Hazel had a perfectly
average intelligence, which meant she couldn't think about anything except in short bursts. And George,
while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was
required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds
or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair
advantage of their brains.
George and Hazel were watching television. There were tears on Hazel's cheeks, but she'd forgotten for
the moment what they were about.
On the television screen were ballerinas.
A buzzer sounded in George's head. His thoughts fled in panic, like bandits from a burglar alarm.
"That was a real pretty dance, that dance they just did," said Hazel.
"Huh" said George.
"That dance-it was nice," said Hazel.
"Yup," said George. He tried to think a little about the ballerinas. They weren't really very good-no
better than anybody else would have been, anyway. They were burdened with sashweights and bags of
birdshot, and their faces were masked, so that no one, seeing a free and graceful gesture or a pretty
face, would feel like something the cat drug in. George was toying with the vague notion that maybe
dancers shouldn't be handicapped. But he didn't get very far with it before another noise in his ear radio
scattered his thoughts.
George winced. So did two out of the eight ballerinas.
Hazel saw him wince. Having no mental handicap herself, she had to ask George what the latest sound
had been.
"Sounded like somebody hitting a milk bottle with a ball peen hammer," said George.
"I'd think it would be real interesting, hearing all the different sounds," said Hazel a little envious. "All
the things they think up."
"Um," said George.
"Only, if I was Handicapper General, you know what I would do?" said Hazel. Hazel, as a matter of fact,
bore a strong resemblance to the Handicapper General, a woman named Diana Moon Glampers. "If I
6
was Diana Moon Glampers," said Hazel, "I'd have chimes on Sunday-just chimes. Kind of in honor of
religion."
"I could think, if it was just chimes," said George.
"Well-maybe make 'em real loud," said Hazel. "I think I'd make a good Handicapper General."
"Good as anybody else," said George.
"Who knows better than I do what normal is?" said Hazel.
"Right," said George. He began to think glimmeringly about his abnormal son who was now in jail, about
Harrison, but a twenty-one-gun salute in his head stopped that.
"Boy!" said Hazel, "that was a doozy, wasn't it?"
It was such a doozy that George was white and trembling, and tears stood on the rims of his red eyes.
Two of the eight ballerinas had collapsed to the studio floor, were holding their temples.
"All of a sudden you look so tired," said Hazel. "Why don't you stretch out on the sofa, so's you can rest
your handicap bag on the pillows, honeybunch." She was referring to the forty-seven pounds of birdshot
in a canvas bag, which was padlocked around George's neck. "Go on and rest the bag for a little while,"
she said. "I don't care if you're not equal to me for a while."
George weighed the bag with his hands. "I don't mind it," he said. "I don't notice it any more. It's just a
part of me."
"You been so tired lately-kind of wore out," said Hazel. "If there was just some way we could make a
little hole in the bottom of the bag, and just take out a few of them lead balls. Just a few."
"Two years in prison and two thousand dollars fine for every ball I took out," said George. "I don't call
that a bargain."
"If you could just take a few out when you came home from work," said Hazel. "I mean-you don't
compete with anybody around here. You just sit around."
"If I tried to get away with it," said George, "then other people'd get away with it-and pretty soon we'd
be right back to the dark ages again, with everybody competing against everybody else. You wouldn't
like that, would you?"
"I'd hate it," said Hazel.
"There you are," said George. The minute people start cheating on laws, what do you think happens to
society?"
If Hazel hadn't been able to come up with an answer to this question, George couldn't have supplied
one. A siren was going off in his head.
"Reckon it'd fall all apart," said Hazel.
"What would?" said George blankly.
"Society," said Hazel uncertainly. "Wasn't that what you just said?
"Who knows?" said George.
The television program was suddenly interrupted for a news bulletin. It wasn't clear at first as to what
the bulletin was about, since the announcer, like all announcers, had a serious speech impediment. For
7
about half a minute, and in a state of high excitement, the announcer tried to say, "Ladies and
Gentlemen."
He finally gave up, handed the bulletin to a ballerina to read.
"That's all right-" Hazel said of the announcer, "he tried. That's the big thing. He tried to do the best he
could with what God gave him. He should get a nice raise for trying so hard."
"Ladies and Gentlemen," said the ballerina, reading the bulletin. She must have been extraordinarily
beautiful, because the mask she wore was hideous. And it was easy to see that she was the strongest
and most graceful of all the dancers, for her handicap bags were as big as those worn by two-hundred
pound men.
And she had to apologize at once for her voice, which was a very unfair voice for a woman to use. Her
voice was a warm, luminous, timeless melody. "Excuse me-" she said, and she began again, making her
voice absolutely uncompetitive.
"Harrison Bergeron, age fourteen," she said in a grackle squawk, "has just escaped from jail, where he
was held on suspicion of plotting to overthrow the government. He is a genius and an athlete, is underhandicapped, and should be regarded as extremely dangerous."
A police photograph of Harrison Bergeron was flashed on the screen-upside down, then sideways,
upside down again, then right side up. The picture showed the full length of Harrison against a
background calibrated in feet and inches. He was exactly seven feet tall.
The rest of Harrison's appearance was Halloween and hardware. Nobody had ever born heavier
handicaps. He had outgrown hindrances faster than the H-G men could think them up. Instead of a little
ear radio for a mental handicap, he wore a tremendous pair of earphones, and spectacles with thick
wavy lenses. The spectacles were intended to make him not only half blind, but to give him whanging
headaches besides.
Scrap metal was hung all over him. Ordinarily, there was a certain symmetry, a military neatness to the
handicaps issued to strong people, but Harrison looked like a walking junkyard. In the race of life,
Harrison carried three hundred pounds.
And to offset his good looks, the H-G men required that he wear at all times a red rubber ball for a nose,
keep his eyebrows shaved off, and cover his even white teeth with black caps at snaggle-tooth random.
"If you see this boy," said the ballerina, "do not - I repeat, do not - try to reason with him."
There was the shriek of a door being torn from its hinges.
Screams and barking cries of consternation came from the television set. The photograph of Harrison
Bergeron on the screen jumped again and again, as though dancing to the tune of an earthquake.
George Bergeron correctly identified the earthquake, and well he might have - for many was the time
his own home had danced to the same crashing tune. "My God-" said George, "that must be Harrison!"
The realization was blasted from his mind instantly by the sound of an automobile collision in his head.
When George could open his eyes again, the photograph of Harrison was gone. A living, breathing
Harrison filled the screen.
Clanking, clownish, and huge, Harrison stood - in the center of the studio. The knob of the uprooted
studio door was still in his hand. Ballerinas, technicians, musicians, and announcers cowered on their
knees before him, expecting to die.
8
"I am the Emperor!" cried Harrison. "Do you hear? I am the Emperor! Everybody must do what I say at
once!" He stamped his foot and the studio shook.
"Even as I stand here" he bellowed, "crippled, hobbled, sickened - I am a greater ruler than any man
who ever lived! Now watch me become what I can become!"
Harrison tore the straps of his handicap harness like wet tissue paper, tore straps guaranteed to support
five thousand pounds.
Harrison's scrap-iron handicaps crashed to the floor.
Harrison thrust his thumbs under the bar of the padlock that secured his head harness. The bar snapped
like celery. Harrison smashed his headphones and spectacles against the wall.
He flung away his rubber-ball nose, revealed a man that would have awed Thor, the god of thunder.
"I shall now select my Empress!" he said, looking down on the cowering people. "Let the first woman
who dares rise to her feet claim her mate and her throne!"
A moment passed, and then a ballerina arose, swaying like a willow.
Harrison plucked the mental handicap from her ear, snapped off her physical handicaps with marvelous
delicacy. Last of all he removed her mask.
She was blindingly beautiful.
"Now-" said Harrison, taking her hand, "shall we show the people the meaning of the word dance?
Music!" he commanded.
The musicians scrambled back into their chairs, and Harrison stripped them of their handicaps, too.
"Play your best," he told them, "and I'll make you barons and dukes and earls."
The music began. It was normal at first-cheap, silly, false. But Harrison snatched two musicians from
their chairs, waved them like batons as he sang the music as he wanted it played. He slammed them
back into their chairs.
The music began again and was much improved.
Harrison and his Empress merely listened to the music for a while-listened gravely, as though
synchronizing their heartbeats with it.
They shifted their weights to their toes.
Harrison placed his big hands on the girls tiny waist, letting her sense the weightlessness that would
soon be hers.
And then, in an explosion of joy and grace, into the air they sprang!
Not only were the laws of the land abandoned, but the law of gravity and the laws of motion as well.
They reeled, whirled, swiveled, flounced, capered, gamboled, and spun.
They leaped like deer on the moon.
The studio ceiling was thirty feet high, but each leap brought the dancers nearer to it.
It became their obvious intention to kiss the ceiling. They kissed it.
And then, neutraling gravity with love and pure will, they remained suspended in air inches below the
ceiling, and they kissed each other for a long, long time.
9
It was then that Diana Moon Glampers, the Handicapper General, came into the studio with a doublebarreled ten-gauge shotgun. She fired twice, and the Emperor and the Empress were dead before they
hit the floor.
Diana Moon Glampers loaded the gun again. She aimed it at the musicians and told them they had ten
seconds to get their handicaps back on.
It was then that the Bergerons' television tube burned out.
Hazel turned to comment about the blackout to George. But George had gone out into the kitchen for a
can of beer.
George came back in with the beer, paused while a handicap signal shook him up. And then he sat down
again. "You been crying" he said to Hazel.
"Yup," she said.
"What about?" he said.
"I forget," she said. "Something real sad on television."
"What was it?" he said.
"It's all kind of mixed up in my mind," said Hazel.
"Forget sad things," said George.
"I always do," said Hazel.
"That's my girl," said George. He winced. There was the sound of a rivetting gun in his head.
"Gee - I could tell that one was a doozy," said Hazel.
"You can say that again," said George.
"Gee-" said Hazel, "I could tell that one was a doozy."
10
“The Road Not Taken”
by Robert Frost
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one was far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I –
I took the one less traveled by,
And that had made all the difference.
11
“Imagine”
by John Lennon
Imagine there's no heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today...
Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace...
You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as one
Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world...
You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will live as one
12
“Ode to the Virginian Voyage”
by Michael Drayton
You brave heroic minds,
Worthy your country's name,
That honour still pursue,
Go and subdue!
Whilst loit'ring hinds
Lurk here at home with shame.
Britons, you stay too long;
Quickly aboard bestow you,
And with a merry gale
Swell your stretch'd sail,
With vows as strong
As the winds that blow you!
Your course securely steer,
West and by south forth keep;
Rocks, lee-shores, nor shoals,
When AEolus scowls,
You need not fear,
So absolute the deep.
And cheerfully at sea
Success you still entice
To get the pearl and gold,
And ours to hold
Virginia,
Earth's only paradise!
Where nature hath in store
Fowl, venison, and fish,
And the fruitful'st soil,
Without your toil,
Three harvests more,
All greater than your wish.
And the ambitious vine
Crowns with his purple mass,
The cedar reaching high
To kiss the sky,
The cypress, pine,
And useful sassafras;
To whose the golden age
Still nature's laws doth give;
No other cares that tend
13
But them to defend
From winter's age,
That long there doth not live.
When as the luscious smell
Of that delicious land,
Above the seas that flows,
The clear wind throws,
Your hearts to swell
Approaching the dear strand.
In kenning of the shore,
Thanks to God first given,
O you, the happiest men,
Be frolic then!
Let cannons roar
Frighting the wide heaven.
And in regions far
Such heroes bring ye forth,
As those from whom we came;
And plant our name
Under that star
Not known unto our north.
And, as there plenty grows
Of laurel everywhere,
Apollo's sacred tree,
You may it see
A poet's brows
To crown, that may sing there.
Thy voyages attend,
Industrious Hakluyt,
Whose reading shall enflame
Men to seek fame,
And much commend
To after-times thy wit.
14
“Pocahontas”
by William Makepeace Thackeray
Wearied arm and broken sword
Wage in vain the desperate fight:
Round him press a countless horde,
He is but a single knight.
Hark! a cry of triumph shrill
Through the wilderness resounds,
As, with twenty bleeding wounds,
Sinks the warrior, fighting still.
Now they heap the fatal pyre,
And the torch of death they light:
Ah! 'tis hard to die of fire!
Who will shield the captive knight?
Round the stake with fiendish cry
Wheel and dance the savage crowd,
Cold the victim's mien, and proud.
And his breast is bared to die.
Who will shield the fearless heart?
Who avert the murderous blade?
From the throng, with sudden start,
See there springs an Indian maid.
Quick she stands before the knight,
"Loose the chain, unbind the ring,
I am daughter of the king,
And I claim the Indian right!"
Dauntlessly aside she flings
Lifted axe and thirsty knife;
Fondly to his heart she clings,
And her bosom guards his life!
In the woods of Powhattan,
Still 'tis told by Indian fires,
How a daughter of their sires
Saved the captive Englishman.
FROM POCAHONTAS.
Returning from the cruel fight
How pale and faint appears my knight!
He sees me anxious at his side;
"Why seek, my love, your wounds to hide?
Or deem your English girl afraid
To emulate the Indian maid?"
15
Be mine my husband's grief to cheer
In peril to be ever near;
Whate'er of ill or woe betide,
To bear it clinging at his side;
The poisoned stroke of fate to ward,
His bosom with my own to guard:
Ah! could it spare a pang to his,
It could not know a purer bliss!
'Twould gladden as it felt the smart,
And thank the hand that flung the dart!
16
“Indian”
by Rosemary and Stephen Vincent Benet
I don't know who this Indian is,
A bow within his hand,
But he is hiding by a tree
And watching white men land.
They may be gods -- they may be fiends -They certainly look rum.
He wonders who on earth they are
And why on earth they've come.
He knows his streams are full of fish,
His forests full of deer,
And his tribe is the mighty tribe
That all the others fear.
-- And, when the French or English land,
The Spanish or the Dutch,
They'll tell him they're the mighty tribe
And no one else is much.
They'll kill his deer and net his fish
And clear away his wood,
And frequently remark to him
They do it for his good.
Then he will scalp and he will shoot
And he will burn and slay
And break the treaties he has made
-- And, children, so will they.
We won't go into all of that
For it's too long a story,
And some is brave and some is sad
And nearly all is gory.
But, just remember this about
Our ancestors so dear:
They didn't find an empty land.
The Indians were here.
17
“Jamestown: 1607, The First Months: Observations Gathered Out of a Discourse on the Plantation of the
Southern Colony in Virginia by the English, 1606, Gentleman”
Master George Percy (National Humanities Center)
In December 1606 three ships left England with 144 men and boys to establish a Virginia colony,
chartered by King James I and funded by investors in the London Company. One of the thirty-eight
noble-men in the expedition was George Percy, who twice served as the colony’s governor. He left
Virginia in 1612 to return to England.
APRIL 1607
. . . The six and twentieth day of April, about four o’clock in the morning, we descried the Land of
Virginia. The same day we entered into the Bay of Chesupioc [Chesapeake] directly, without any let or
hindrance. There we landed and discovered [explored] a little way, but we could find nothing worth the
speaking of, but fair meadows and goodly tall Trees, with such Fresh-waters running through the woods,
as I was almost ravished at the first sight thereof.
At night, when we were going aboard, there came the Savages creeping upon all fours, from the Hills,
like Bears, with their Bows in their mouths, [who] charged us very desperately in the faces, hurt Captain
Gabriel Archer in both his hands, and a sailor in two places of the body very dangerous. After they had
spent their Arrows, and felt the sharpness of our shot, they retired into the Woods with a great noise,
and so left us.
The seven and twentieth day we began to build up our Shallop [small boat]. The Gentle- men and
Soldiers marched eight miles up into the land. We could not see a Savage in all that march. We came to
a place where they had made a great fire, and had been newly roasting Oysters. When they perceived
our coming, they fled away to the mountains, and left many of the Oysters in the fire. We eat some of
the Oysters, which were very large and delicate in taste.
The eighteenth day [28th] we launched our Shallop. The Captain and some Gentlemen went in her, and
discovered [explored] up the Bay. We found a River on the Southside running into the Main[land]; we
entered it and found it very shallow water, not for any Boats to swim. We went further into the Bay, and
saw a plain plot of ground where we went on Land, and found the place five mile in compass, without
either Bush or Tree. We saw nothing there but a Canoe, which was made out of the whole tree, which
was five and forty foot long by the Rule. Upon this plot of ground we got good store of Mussels and
Oysters, which lay on the ground as thick as stones. We opened some, and found in many of them
Pearls.
We marched some three or four miles further into the woods, where we saw great smokes of fire. We
marched to those smokes and found that the Savages had been there burning down the grass, as we
thought either to make their plantation there, or else to give signs to bring their forces together, and so
to give us battle. . . .
All this march we could neither see Savage nor Town. When it grew to be towards night, we stood back
to our Ships, we sounded and found it shallow water for a great way, which put us out of all hopes for
getting any higher with our Ships, which rode at the mouth of the River. We rowed over to a point of
Land, where we found a channel, and sounded six, eight, ten, or twelve fathoms: which put us in good
comfort. Therefore we named that point of Land Cape Comfort.
18
The nine and twentieth day we set up a Cross at Chesupioc Bay, and named that place Cape Henry.
Thirtieth day, we came with our ships to Cape Comfort; where we saw five Savages running on the
shore. Presently the Captain caused the shallop to be manned; so rowing to the shore, the Captain
called to them in sign of friendship, but they were at first very timerous, until they saw the Captain lay
his hand on his heart; upon that they laid down their Bows and Arrows, and came very boldly to us,
making signs to come ashore to their Town, which is called by the Savages Kecoughtan [“great town,”
commanded by a son of Powhatan]. We coasted to their Town, rowing over a River running into the
Main[land], where these Savages swam over with their Bows and Arrows in their mouths.
When we came over to the other side, there was a many of other Savages which directed us to their
Town, where we were entertained by them very kindly. When we came first a Land they made a doleful
noise, laying their faces to the ground, scratching the earth with their nails. We did think they had been
at their Idolatry. When they had ended their Ceremonies, they went into their houses and brought out
mats and laid upon the ground: the chiefest of them sat all in a rank; the meanest sort brought us such
dainties as they had, and of their bread which they make of their Maize or Gennea [Guinea] wheat. They
would not suffer us to eat unless we sat down, which we did on a Mat right against them. After we were
well satisfied they gave us of their Tobacco, which they took in a pipe made artificially of earth as ours
are, but far bigger, with the bowl fashioned together with a piece of fine copper. After they had feasted
us, they showed us, in welcome, their manner of dancing, which was in this fashion. One of the Savages
standing in the midst singing, beating one hand against another, all the rest dancing about him,
shouting, howling, and stamping against the ground, with many Antic tricks and faces, making noise like
so many Wolves or Devils. . . .
MAY 1607
The fourth day of May, we came to the King or Werowance of Paspihe [Paspahegh]: where they
entertained us with much welcome. An old Savage made a long Oration, making a foul noise, uttering his
speech with a vehement action, but we knew little what they meant. While we were in company with
the Paspihes, the Werowance of Rapahanna came from the other side of the River in his Canoe. He
seemed to take displeasure of our being with the Paspihes. He would fain have had us to come to his
Town. The Captain was unwilling. Seeing that the day was so far spent, he returned back to his ships for
that night.
The next day, being the fifth of May, the Werowance [leader] of Rapahanna sent a Messenger to have us
come to him. We entertained the said Messenger, and gave him trifles which pleased him. We manned
our shallop with Muskets and Targatiers sufficiently: this said Messenger guided us where our
determination was to go. When we landed, the Werowance of Rapahanna came down to the water side
with all his train, as goodly men as any I have seen of Savages or Christians: the Werowance coming
before them playing on a Flute made of a Reed, with a Crown of Deer’s hair colored red, in fashion of a
Rose fastened about his knot of hair, and a great Plate of Copper on the other side of his head, with two
long Feathers in fashion of a pair of Horns placed in the middle of his Crown. His body was painted all
with Crimson, with a Chain of Beads about his neck, his face painted blue, besprinkled with silver Ore as
we thought, his ears all behung with Bracelets of Pearl, and in either ear a Bird’s Claw through it beset
with fine Copper or Gold. He entertained us in so modest a proud fashion, as though he had been a
Prince of civil government, holding his countenance without laughter or any such ill behavior. . . .
19
The eighth day of May we discovered [explored] up the River. We landed in the Country of Apamatica.
At our landing, there came many stout and able Savages to resist us with their Bows and Arrows, in a
most warlike manner, with the swords at their backs beset with sharp stones, and pieces of iron able to
cleave a man in sunder. Among the rest one of the chiefest, standing before them cross-legged, with his
Arrow ready in his Bow in one hand, and taking a Pipe of Tobacco in the other, with a bold uttering of his
speech, demanded of us our being there, willing us to be gone. We made signs of peace, which they
perceived in the end, and let us land in quietness. . . .
The thirteenth day, we came to our seating place [Jamestown] in Paspihas Country, some eight miles
from the point of Land, which I made mention before: where our ships do lie so near the shore that they
are moored to the Trees in six fathom water.
The fourteenth day, we landed all our men, which were set to work about the fortification, and others
some to watch and ward as it was convenient. The first night of our landing, about midnight, there came
some Savages sailing close to our quarter. Presently there was an alarm given; upon that the Savages
ran away, and we [were] not troubled any more by them that night. Not long after there came two
Savages that seemed to be Commanders, bravely dressed, with Crowns of colored hair upon their heads,
he came as Messengers from the Werowance of Paspihae, telling us that their Werowance was coming
and would be merry with us with a fat Deer.
The eighteenth day, the Werowance of Paspihae came himself to our quarter, with one hundred
Savages armed, who guarded him in a very warlike manner with Bows and Arrows, thinking at that time
to execute their villainy. Paspihae made great signs to us to lay our Arms away. But we would not trust
him so far. He seeing he could not have convenient time to work his will, at length made signs that he
would give us as much land as we would desire to take. As the Savages were in a throng in the Fort, one
of them stole a Hatchet from one of our company, which spied him doing the deed: whereupon he took
it from him by force, and also struck him over the arm. Presently another Savage seeing that, came
fiercely at our man with a wooden sword, thinking to beat out his brains. The Werowance of Paspiha
saw us take to our Arms, went suddenly away with all his company in great anger. . . .
The twentieth day of Werowance of Paspiha sent forty of his men with a Deer, to our quarter: but they
came more in villainy than any love they bare us. They faine would have lain in our Fort all night, but we
would not suffer them for fear of their treachery. . . .
At Port Cotage in our Voyage up the River, we saw a Savage Boy about the age of ten years, who had a
head of hair of a perfect yellow and a reasonable white skin, which is a Miracle among all Savages1. . . .
The four and twentieth day we set up a Cross at the head of this River, naming it Kings River, where we
proclaimed James King of England to have the most right to it. When we had finished and set up our
Cross, we shipped our men and made for James Fort. By the way, we came to Pohatan’s Towre [sic],
where the Captain went on shore suffering none to go with him. He presented the Commander of this
place, with a Hatchet which he took joyfully, and was well pleased.
But yet the Savages murmured at our planting in the Country, whereupon this Werowance made answer
again very wisely of a Savage, Why should you be offended with them as long as they hurt you not, nor
take any thing away by force. They take but a little waste ground, which does you nor any of us any
good.
20
I saw Bread made by their women, which do all their drudgery. The men take their pleasure in hunting
and their wars, which they are in continually, one Kingdom against another. . . .
JUNE - JULY 1607
The fifteenth of June we had built and finished our Fort, which was trianglewise, having three Bulwarks,
at every corner, like a half Moon, and four or five pieces of Artillery mounted in them. We had made
ourselves sufficiently strong for these Savages. We had also sown most of our Corn on two Mountains
[slight elevations]. It sprang a man’s height from the ground. This Country is a fruitful soil, bearing many
goodly and fruitful Trees, as Mulberries, Cherries, Walnuts, Cedars, Cypress, Sassafras, and Vines in great
abundance.
Monday the two and twentieth of June, in the morning, Captain Newport in the Admiral departed from
James Port for England.
Captain Newport being gone for England, leaving us (one hundred and four persons) very bare and
scanty of victuals, furthermore in wars and in danger of the Savages, we hoped after a supply which
Captain Newport promised within twenty weeks. But if the beginners of this action do carefully further
us, the Country being so fruitful, it would be as great a profit to the Realm of England, as the Indies to
the King of Spain. If this River which we have found had been discovered in the time of war with Spain, it
would have been a commodity to our Realm, and a great annoyance to our enemies.
The seven and twentieth of July, the King of Rappahanna demanded a Canoe, which was restored, lifted
up his hand to the Sun (which they worship as their God), besides he laid his hand on his heart, that he
would be our special friend. It is a general rule of these people, when they swear by their God which is
the Sun, no Christian will keep their Oath better upon this promise. . . .
AUGUST - SEPTEMBER 1607
The sixth of August there died John Asbie of the bloody Flux [dysentery]. The ninth day died George
Flower of the swelling. The tenth day died William Bruster, Gentleman, of a wound given by the Savages,
and was buried the eleventh day.
The fourteenth day, Jerome Alicock, Ancient, died of a wound, the same day, Francis Midwinter, Edward
Moris, Corporall, died suddenly.
The fifteenth day, there died Edward Brown and Stephen Galthorpe. The sixteenth day, there died
Thomas Gower, Gentleman. The seventeenth day, there died Thomas Mounslic. The eighteenth day,
there died Robert Pennington, and John Martin, Gentleman. The nineteenth day, died Drue Pigasse,
Gentleman. The two and twentieth day of August, there died Captain Bartholomew Gosnold, one of our
Council: he was honorably buried, having all the Ordnance in the Fort shot off, with many volleys of
small shot.
After Captain Gosnold’s death, the Council could hardly agree by the dissension of Captain Kendall,
which afterward was committed about heinous matters which was proved against him.
The four and twentieth day, died Edward Harrington and George Walker, and were buried the same day.
The six and twentieth day, died Kenelme Throgmortin. The seven and twentieth day died William Roods.
The eight and twentieth day died Thomas Stoodie, Cape Merchant.
21
The fourth day of September died Thomas Jacob Sergeant. The fifth day, there died Benjamin Beast. Our
men were destroyed with cruel diseases, as Swellings, Fluxes, Burning Fevers, and by wars, and some
departed suddenly, but for the most part they died of mere famine. There were never Englishmen left in
a foreign Country in such misery as we were in this new discovered Virginia. We watched every three
nights, lying on the bare cold ground, what weather soever came [and] warded all the next day, which
brought our men to be most feeble wretches. Our food was but a small Can of Barley sod in water, to
five men a day, our drink cold water taken out of the River, which was at a flood very salty, at a low tide
full of slime and filth, which was the destruction of many of our men. Thus we lived for the space of five
months in this miserable distress, not having five able men to man our Bulwarks upon any occasion. If it
had not pleased God to have put a terror in the Savages’ hearts, we had all perished by those wild and
cruel Pagans, being in that weak estate as we were; our men night and day groaning in every corner of
the Fort most pitiful to hear. If there were any conscience in men, it would make their hearts to bleed to
hear the pitiful murmurings and outcries of our sick men without relief, every night and day, for the
space of six weeks, some departing out of the World, many times three or four in a night; in the
morning, their bodies trailed out of their Cabins like Dogs to be buried. In this sort did I see the mortality
of diverse of our people.
It pleased God, after a while, to send those people which were our mortal enemies to relieve us with
victuals, as Bread, Corn, Fish, and Flesh in great plenty, which was the setting up of our feeble men,
otherwise we had all perished. Also we were frequented by diverse Kings in the Country, bringing us
store of provision to our great comfort.
The eleventh day, there was certain articles laid against Master Wingfield which was then President;
thereupon he was not only displaced out of his President ship, but also from being of the Council.
Afterwards Captain John Ratcliffe was chosen President.
The eighteenth day, died one Ellis Kinistone, which was starved to death with cold. The same day at
night, died one Richard Simmons. The nineteenth day, there died one Thomas Mouton.
22
“Our Plantation is Very Weak”: The Experiences of an Indentured Servant in Virginia, 1623
by Richard Frethorne
Planters in early seventeenth-century Virginia had bountiful amounts of land and a profitable crop in
tobacco, but they needed labor to till their fields. They faced resistance from the local Indian people and
were unable to enslave them, so they recruited poor English adults as servants. These young men and
women signed indentures, or contracts, for four to seven year terms of work in exchange for their
passage to North America. Richard Frethorne came to Jamestown colony in 1623 as an indentured
servant. In this letter dated March 20, 1623, written just three months after his entry into the colony, he
described the death and disease all around him. Two thirds of his fellow shipmates had died since their
arrival. Those without capital suffered particularly precarious situations with the lack of supplies and loss
of leaders. Frethorne pleaded with his parents to redeem (buy out) his indenture.
Richard Frethorne:
LOVING AND KIND FATHER AND MOTHER:
My most humble duty remembered to you, hoping in god of your good health, as I myself am at the
making hereof. This is to let you understand that I your child am in a most heavy case by reason of the
country, [which] is such that it causeth much sickness, [such] as the scurvy and the bloody flux and
diverse other diseases, which maketh the body very poor and weak. And when we are sick there is
nothing to comfort us; for since I came out of the ship I never ate anything but peas, and loblollie (that
is, water gruel). As for deer or venison I never saw any since I came into this land. There is indeed some
fowl, but we are not allowed to go and get it, but must work hard both early and late for a mess of water
gruel and a mouthful of bread and beef. A mouthful of bread for a penny loaf must serve for four men
which is most pitiful. [You would be grieved] if you did know as much as I [do], when people cry out day
and night – Oh! That they were in England without their limbs – and would not care to lose any limb to
be in England again, yea, though they beg from door to door. For we live in fear of the enemy every
hour, yet we have had a combat with them … and we took two alive and made slaves of them. But it was
by policy, for we are in great danger; for our plantation is very weak by reason of the death and sickness
of our company. For we came but twenty for the merchants, and they are half dead just; and we look
every hour when two more should go. Yet there came some four other men yet to live with us, of which
there is but one alive; and our Lieutenant is dead, and [also] his father and his brother. And there was
some five or six of the last year’s twenty, of which there is but three left, so that we are fain to get other
men to plant with us; and yet we are but 32 to fight against 3000 if they should come. And the nighest
help that we have is ten mile of us, and when the rogues overcame this place [the] last [time] they slew
80 persons. How then shall we do, for we lie even in their teeth? They may easily take us, but [for the
fact] that God is merciful and can save with few as well as with many, as he showed to Gilead. And like
Gilead’s soldiers, if they lapped water, we drink water which is but weak.
And I have nothing to comfort me, nor is there nothing to be gotten here but sickness and death, except
[in the event] that one had money to lay out in some things for profit. But I have nothing at all–no, not a
shirt to my back but two rags (2), nor clothes but one poor suit, nor but one pair of shoes, but one pair
of stockings, but one cap, [and] but two bands [collars]. My cloak is stolen by one of my fellows, and to
his dying hour [he] would not tell me what he did with it; but some of my fellows saw him have butter
and beef out of a ship, which my cloak, I doubt [not], paid for. So that I have not a penny, nor a penny
worth, to help me too either spice or sugar or strong waters, without the which one cannot live here.
23
For as strong beer in England doth fatten and strengthen them, so water here doth wash and weaken
these here [and] only keeps [their] life and soul together. But I am not half [of] a quarter so strong as I
was in England, and all is for want of victuals; for I do protest unto you that I have eaten more in [one]
day at home than I have allowed me here for a week. You have given more than my day’s allowance to a
beggar at the door; and if Mr. Jackson had not relieved me, I should be in a poor case. But he like a
father and she like a loving mother doth still help me.
For when we go to Jamestown (that is 10 miles of us) there lie all the ships that come to land, and there
they must deliver their goods. And when we went up to town [we would go], as it may be, on Monday at
noon, and come there by night, [and] then load the next day by noon, and go home in the afternoon,
and unload, and then away again in the night, and [we would] be up about midnight. Then if it rained or
blowed never so hard, we must lie in the boat on the water and have nothing but a little bread. For
when we go into the boat we [would] have a loaf allowed to two men, and it is all [we would get] if we
stayed there two days, which is hard; and [we] must lie all that while in the boat. But that Goodman
Jackson pitied me and made me a cabin to lie in always when I [would] come up, and he would give me
some poor jacks [fish] [to take] home with me, which comforted me more than peas or water gruel. Oh,
they be very godly folks, and love me very well, and will do anything for me. And he much marvelled
that you would send me a servant to the Company; he saith I had been better knocked on the head. And
indeed so I find it now, to my great grief and misery; and [I] saith that if you love me you will redeem me
suddenly, for which I do entreat and beg. And if you cannot get the merchants to redeem me for some
little money, then for God’s sake get a gathering or entreat some good folks to lay out some little sum of
money in meal and cheese and butter and beef. Any eating meat will yield great profit. Oil and vinegar is
very good; but, father, there is great loss in leaking. But for God’s sake send beef and cheese and butter,
or the more of one sort and none of another. But if you send cheese, it must be very old cheese; and at
the cheesemonger’s you may buy very food cheese for twopence farthing or halfpenny, that will be liked
very well. But if you send cheese, you must have a care how you pack it in barrels; and you must put
cooper’s chips between every cheese, or else the heat of the hold will rot them. And look whatsoever
you send me – be in never so much–look, what[ever] I make of it, I will deal truly with you. I will send it
over and beg the profit to redeem me; and if I die before it come, I have entreated Goodman Jackson to
send you the worth of it, who hath promised he will. If you send, you must direct your letters to
Goodman Jackson, at Jamestown, a gunsmith. (You must set down his freight, because there be more of
his name there.) Good father, do not forget me, but have mercy and pity my miserable case. I know if
you did but see me, you would weep to see me; for I have but one suit. (But [though] it is a strange one,
it is very well guarded.) Wherefore, for God’s sake, pity me. I pray you to remember my love to all my
friends and kindred. I hope all my brothers and sisters are in good health, and as for my part I have set
down my resolution that certainly will be; that is, that the answer of this letter will be life or death to
me. Therefore, good father, send as soon as you can; and if you send me any thing let this be the mark.
ROT
RICHARD FRETHORNE,
MARTIN’S HUNDRED .
24
“Forensic Anthropology”
Department of Anthropology, The University of Tennessee, Knoxville
Generally speaking forensic anthropology is the examination of human skeletal remains for law
enforcement agencies to determine the identity of unidentified bones.
Further definition of the term is necessary to understand the scope and basis of forensic anthropology.
Anthropology alone is the study of man. Anthropologists are interested in culture (cultural
anthropologists), language (linguistic anthropologists), the physical remains or artifacts left behind by
human occupation (archaeologists), and human remains or bones and teeth (physical anthropologists).
Forensic anthropologists are commonly portrayed in the media as forensic scientists and/or crime
scene technicians, but this is not accurate.
Over the past century physical anthropologists (those who study human remains) have developed
methods to evaluate bones to figure out things about people who lived in the past. These techniques
help them to answer questions about the remains they are studying.
The questions that might be looked into include: Was this individual male or female? How old were they
when they died? How tall were they? Were the people studied in good or poor general health?
Forensic anthropology involves the application of these same methods to modern cases of unidentified
human remains. Through the established methods, a forensic anthropologist can aid law enforcement in
establishing a profile on the unidentified remains. The profile includes sex, age, ethnicity, height, length
of time since death, and sometimes the evaluation of trauma seen on bones.
In many cases after identity of an individual is made, the forensic anthropologist is called to testify in
court regarding the identity of the remains and/or the trauma or wounds present on the remains.
What do forensic anthropologists do?
Forensic anthropologists are commonly portrayed in the media as forensic scientists and/or crime scene
technicians, but this is not accurate. Forensic anthropologists deal strictly with the human remains.
While some people trained in forensic anthropology are also trained in evidence collection techniques,
most forensic anthropologists only specialize in techniques related to analysis of the remains or bones
only.
Generally, forensic anthropologists DO NOT do any of the following:

Collect trace evidence (hair, fibers)

Run DNA tests

Analyze ballistics or weapon evidence

Analyze blood spatter

Conduct autopsies
What a forensic anthropologist DOES do to aid in a case:

Goes to a crime scene to assist in the collection of human remains

Cleans up the bones so that they may be looked at

Analyzes skeletal remains to establish the profile of the individual
25

Looks at trauma evident on the bones to establish the pathway of a bullet or the number of stab
wounds

Works with a forensic odontologist (dentist) to match dental records

Testifies in court about the identity of the individual and/or the injuries that might be evident in the
skeleton
What training do forensic anthropologists need?
Current minimum requirements necessary to become a forensic anthropologist include a Bachelor's
degree in anthropology or a closely related field, a Master's degree in anthropology, and usually a PhD in
physical anthropology.
Additionally, during their education the student must seek out opportunities to gain experience by
assisting an established forensic anthropologist with casework.
After the PhD, there is still additional training to complete. Though not a requirement, the American
Board of Forensic Anthropology recognizes established forensic anthropologists as diplomates after the
required educational requirements are met and the candidate successfully completes written and
practical exams.
Where do forensic anthropologists work?
Forensic anthropologists are employed primarily at universities and forensic facilities around the
country. Most forensic anthropologists teach and perform research in other areas of anthropology in
addition to their casework. Some forensic anthropologists have found jobs in forensic facilities where
they work closely with medical examiners or forensic pathologists.
What are examples of cases forensic anthropologists work on?
Here are two case scenarios where the assistance of a forensic anthropologist would be necessary:
Case 1: A hunter is in the woods and comes across what he thinks is a human skull. He marks the area
and goes to get police to bring them back to the area. A forensic anthropologist might be called to assist
in determining first of all if the remains are in fact human. If the remains are human then the
anthropologist can assist law enforcement with the collection of the remains at the scene. Typically the
anthropologist would photograph the remains prior to removal and also make a pictorial view or site
map of the area so that if need be the scene could be recreated later. During the scene work the
anthropologist would work with other crime scene specialists who might be interested in other evidence
that cold be found at the scene such as weapons, blood, DNA, etc. Forensic anthropologists can then
look at the bones to establish a profile of the remains including the age, sex, ethnicity, height, time since
death, and trauma. If the police have a missing person in mind, the forensic anthropologist can then
work with the medical examiner and forensic odontologist to determine if the identity is a match.
Case 2: A forensic pathologist is presented with partially decomposed remains of an individual and the
identity has already been established. However, there is evidence of multiple traumatic injuries
(example: gun shot wounds and/or knife wounds) that occurred close to the time of death and the state
of the remains prevents the pathologist from being able to fully understand the extent of the trauma to
the remains. The forensic anthropologist aids the pathologist by cleaning the bones and looking closely
at them to determine the number and type of traumatic episodes. Through their analyses the forensic
anthropologist is able to identify multiple types of traumatic injury, potentially an important factor in
the trial.
26
“The Gift of the Magi”
by O. Henry
One dollar and eighty–seven cents. That was all. And sixty cents of it was in pennies. Pennies saved one
and two at a time by bulldozing the grocer and the vegetable man and the butcher until one’s cheeks
burned with the silent imputation of parsimony that such close dealing implied. Three times Della
counted it. One dollar and eighty–seven cents. And the next day would be Christmas.
There was clearly nothing to do but flop down on the shabby little couch and howl. So Della did it. Which
instigates the moral reflection that life is made up of sobs, sniffles, and smiles, with sniffles
predominating.
While the mistress of the home is gradually subsiding from the first stage to the second, take a look at
the home. A furnished flat at $8 per week. It did not exactly beggar description, but it certainly had that
word on the lookout for the mendicancy squad.
In the vestibule below was a letter–box into which no letter would go, and an electric button from which
no mortal finger could coax a ring. Also appertaining thereunto was a card bearing the name “Mr. James
Dillingham Young.”
The “Dillingham” had been flung to the breeze during a former period of prosperity when its possessor
was being paid $30 per week. Now, when the income was shrunk to $20, though, they were thinking
seriously of contracting to a modest and unassuming D. But whenever Mr. James Dillingham Young
came home and reached his flat above he was called “Jim” and greatly hugged by Mrs. James Dillingham
Young, already introduced to you as Della. Which is all very good.
Della finished her cry and attended to her cheeks with the powder rag. She stood by the window and
looked out dully at a gray cat walking a gray fence in a gray backyard. Tomorrow would be Christmas
Day, and she had only $1.87 with which to buy Jim a present. She had been saving every penny she
could for months, with this result. Twenty dollars a week doesn’t go far. Expenses had been greater than
she had calculated. They always are. Only $1.87 to buy a present for Jim. Her Jim. Many a happy hour
she had spent planning for something nice for him. Something fine and rare and sterling—something
just a little bit near to being worthy of the honor of being owned by Jim.
There was a pier–glass between the windows of the room. Perhaps you have seen a pierglass in an $8
flat. A very thin and very agile person may, by observing his reflection in a rapid sequence of longitudinal
strips, obtain a fairly accurate conception of his looks. Della, being slender, had mastered the art.
Suddenly she whirled from the window and stood before the glass. her eyes were shining brilliantly, but
her face had lost its color within twenty seconds. Rapidly she pulled down her hair and let it fall to its full
length.
Now, there were two possessions of the James Dillingham Youngs in which they both took a mighty
pride. One was Jim’s gold watch that had been his father’s and his grandfather’s. The other was Della’s
hair. Had the queen of Sheba lived in the flat across the airshaft, Della would have let her hair hang out
the window some day to dry just to depreciate Her Majesty’s jewels and gifts. Had King Solomon been
the janitor, with all his treasures piled up in the basement, Jim would have pulled out his watch every
time he passed, just to see him pluck at his beard from envy.
So now Della’s beautiful hair fell about her rippling and shining like a cascade of brown waters. It
reached below her knee and made itself almost a garment for her. And then she did it up again
nervously and quickly. Once she faltered for a minute and stood still while a tear or two splashed on the
worn red carpet.
27
On went her old brown jacket; on went her old brown hat. With a whirl of skirts and with the brilliant
sparkle still in her eyes, she fluttered out the door and down the stairs to the street.
Where she stopped the sign read: “Mne. Sofronie. Hair Goods of All Kinds.” One flight up Della ran, and
collected herself, panting. Madame, large, too white, chilly, hardly looked the “Sofronie.”
“Will you buy my hair?” asked Della.
“I buy hair,” said Madame. “Take yer hat off and let’s have a sight at the looks of it.”
Down rippled the brown cascade.
“Twenty dollars,” said Madame, lifting the mass with a practised hand.
“Give it to me quick,” said Della.
Oh, and the next two hours tripped by on rosy wings. Forget the hashed metaphor. She was ransacking
the stores for Jim’s present.
She found it at last. It surely had been made for Jim and no one else. There was no other like it in any of
the stores, and she had turned all of them inside out. It was a platinum fob chain simple and chaste in
design, properly proclaiming its value by substance alone and not by meretricious ornamentation—as all
good things should do. It was even worthy of The Watch. As soon as she saw it she knew that it must be
Jim’s. It was like him. Quietness and value—the description applied to both. Twenty–one dollars they
took from her for it, and she hurried home with the 87 cents. With that chain on his watch Jim might be
properly anxious about the time in any company. Grand as the watch was, he sometimes looked at it on
the sly on account of the old leather strap that he used in place of a chain.
When Della reached home her intoxication gave way a little to prudence and reason. She got out her
curling irons and lighted the gas and went to work repairing the ravages made by generosity added to
love. Which is always a tremendous task, dear friends—a mammoth task.
Within forty minutes her head was covered with tiny, close–lying curls that made her look wonderfully
like a truant schoolboy. She looked at her reflection in the mirror long, carefully, and critically.
“If Jim doesn’t kill me,” she said to herself, “before he takes a second look at me, he’ll say I look like a
Coney Island chorus girl. But what could I do—oh! what could I do with a dollar and eighty–seven
cents?”
At 7 o’clock the coffee was made and the frying–pan was on the back of the stove hot and ready to cook
the chops.
Jim was never late. Della doubled the fob chain in her hand and sat on the corner of the table near the
door that he always entered. Then she heard his step on the stair away down on the first flight, and she
turned white for just a moment. She had a habit of saying a little silent prayer about the simplest
everyday things, and now she whispered: “Please God, make him think I am still pretty.”
The door opened and Jim stepped in and closed it. He looked thin and very serious. Poor fellow, he was
only twenty–two—and to be burdened with a family! He needed a new overcoat and he was without
gloves.
Jim stopped inside the door, as immovable as a setter at the scent of quail. His eyes were fixed upon
Della, and there was an expression in them that she could not read, and it terrified her. It was not anger,
nor surprise, nor disapproval, nor horror, nor any of the sentiments that she had been prepared for. He
simply stared at her fixedly with that peculiar expression on his face.
Della wriggled off the table and went for him.
28
“Jim, darling,” she cried, “don’t look at me that way. I had my hair cut off and sold because I couldn’t
have lived through Christmas without giving you a present. It’ll grow out again—you won’t mind, will
you? I just had to do it. My hair grows awfully fast. Say `Merry Christmas!’ Jim, and let’s be happy. You
don’t know what a nice—what a beautiful, nice gift I’ve got for you.”
“You’ve cut off your hair?” asked Jim, laboriously, as if he had not arrived at that patent fact yet even
after the hardest mental labor.
“Cut it off and sold it,” said Della. “Don’t you like me just as well, anyhow? I’m me without my hair, ain’t
I?”
Jim looked about the room curiously.
“You say your hair is gone?” he said, with an air almost of idiocy.
“You needn’t look for it,” said Della. “It’s sold, I tell you—sold and gone, too. It’s Christmas Eve, boy. Be
good to me, for it went for you. Maybe the hairs of my head were numbered,” she went on with sudden
serious sweetness, “but nobody could ever count my love for you. Shall I put the chops on, Jim?”
Out of his trance Jim seemed quickly to wake. He enfolded his Della. For ten seconds let us regard with
discreet scrutiny some inconsequential object in the other direction. Eight dollars a week or a million a
year—what is the difference? A mathematician or a wit would give you the wrong answer. The magi
brought valuable gifts, but that was not among them. This dark assertion will be illuminated later on.
Jim drew a package from his overcoat pocket and threw it upon the table.
“Don’t make any mistake, Dell,” he said, “about me. I don’t think there’s anything in the way of a haircut
or a shave or a shampoo that could make me like my girl any less. But if you’ll unwrap that package you
may see why you had me going a while at first.”
White fingers and nimble tore at the string and paper. And then an ecstatic scream of joy; and then,
alas! a quick feminine change to hysterical tears and wails, necessitating the immediate employment of
all the comforting powers of the lord of the flat.
For there lay The Combs—the set of combs, side and back, that Della had worshipped long in a
Broadway window. Beautiful combs, pure tortoise shell, with jewelled rims—just the shade to wear in
the beautiful vanished hair. They were expensive combs, she knew, and her heart had simply craved and
yearned over them without the least hope of possession. And now, they were hers, but the tresses that
should have adorned the coveted adornments were gone.
But she hugged them to her bosom, and at length she was able to look up with dim eyes and a smile and
say: “My hair grows so fast, Jim!”
And then Della leaped up like a little singed cat and cried, “Oh, oh!”
Jim had not yet seen his beautiful present. She held it out to him eagerly upon her open palm. The dull
precious metal seemed to flash with a reflection of her bright and ardent spirit.
“Isn’t it a dandy, Jim? I hunted all over town to find it. You’ll have to look at the time a hundred times a
day now. Give me your watch. I want to see how it looks on it.”
Instead of obeying, Jim tumbled down on the couch and put his hands under the back of his head and
smiled.
“Dell,” said he, “let’s put our Christmas presents away and keep ‘em a while. They’re too nice to use just
at present. I sold the watch to get the money to buy your combs. And now suppose you put the chops
on.”
29
The magi, as you know, were wise men—wonderfully wise men—who brought gifts to the Babe in the
manger. They invented the art of giving Christmas presents. Being wise, their gifts were no doubt wise
ones, possibly bearing the privilege of exchange in case of duplication. And here I have lamely related to
you the uneventful chronicle of two foolish children in a flat who most unwisely sacrificed for each other
the greatest treasures of their house. But in a last word to the wise of these days let it be said that of all
who give gifts these two were the wisest. Of all who give and receive gifts, such as they are wisest.
Everywhere they are wisest. They are the magi.
30
“The Treasure of Lemon Brown”
by Walter Dean Myers
The dark sky, filled with angry, swirling clouds, reflected Greg Ridley’s mood as he sat on the
stoop of his building. His father’s voice came to him again, first reading the letter the principal had sent
to the house, then lecturing endlessly about his poor efforts in math.
“I had to leave school when I was thirteen,” his father had said, “that’s a year younger than you
are now. If I’d had half the chances you have, I’d…”
Greg sat in the small, pale green kitchen listening, knowing the lecture would end with his father
saying he couldn’t play ball with the Scorpions. He had asked his father the week before, and his father
had said it depended on his next report card. It wasn’t often the Scorpions took on new players,
especially fourteen-year-olds, and this was a chance of a lifetime for Greg. He hadn’t been allowed to
play high school ball, which he had really wanted to do, but playing for the Community Center team was
the next best thing. Report cards were due in a week, and Greg had been hoping for the best. But the
principal had ended the suspense early when she sent the letter saying Greg would probably fail math if
he didn’t spend more time studying.
“And you want to play basketball?” His father’s brows knitted over deep brown eyes. “That
must be some kind of a joke. Now you just get into your room and hit those books.”
That had been two nights before. His father’s words, like the distant thunder that now echoed
through the streets of Harlem, still rumbled softly in his ears.
It was beginning to cool. Gusts of wind made bits of paper dance between the parked cars.
There was a flash of nearby lightening, and soon large drops of rain splashed onto his jeans. He stood to
go upstairs, thought of the lecture that probably awaited him if he did anything except shut himself in
his room with his math book, and started walking down the street instead. Down the block there was an
old tenement that had been abandoned for some months. Some of the guys had held an impromptu
checker tournament there the week before, and Greg had noticed that the door, once boarded over,
had been slightly ajar.
Pulling his collar up as high as he could, he checked for traffic and made a dash across the street.
He reached the house just as another flash of lightening changed the night to day for an instant, then
returned the graffiti-scarred building to the grim shadows. He vaulted over the outer stairs and pushed
tentatively on the door. It was open, and he let himself in.
The inside of the building was dark except for the dim light that filtered through the dirty
windows from the streetlamps. There was a room a few feet from the door, and from where he stood in
the entrance, Greg could see a squarish patch of light on the floor. He entered the room, frowning at the
musty smell. It was a large room that might have been someone’s parlor at one time. Squinting, Greg
could see an old table on its side against one wall, what looked like a pile of rags or a torn mattress in
the corner, and a couch, with one side broken, in front of the window.
He went to the couch. The side that wasn’t broken was comfortable enough, though a little
creaky. From the spot he could see the blinking neon sign over the bodega on the corner. He sat awhile,
watching the sign blink first green then red, allowing his mind to drift to the Scorpions, then to his
father. His father had been a postal worker for all Greg’s life, and was proud of it, often telling Greg how
hard he had worked to pass the test. Greg had heard the story too many times to be interested now.
For a moment Greg thought he heard something that sounded like a scraping against the wall.
He listened carefully, but it was gone.
31
Outside the wind had picked up, sending the rain against the window with a force that shook
the glass in its frame. A car passed, its tires hissing over the wet street and its red taillights glowing in
the darkness.
Greg thought he heard the noise again. His stomach tightened as he held himself still and
listened intently. There weren’t any more scraping noises, but he was sure he had heard something in
the darkness— something breathing!
He tried to figure out just where the breathing was coming from; he knew it was in the room
with him. Slowly he stood, tensing. As he turned, a flash of lightening lit up the room, frightening him
with its sudden brilliance. He saw nothing, just the overturned table, the pile of rags and an old
newspaper on the floor. Could he have been imagining the sounds? He continued listening, but heard
nothing and thought that it might have just been rats. Still, he thought, as soon as the rain let up he
would leave. He went to the window and was about to look when he heard a voice behind him.
“Don’t try nothin’ ‘cause I got a razor sharp enough to cut a week into nine days!”
Greg, except for an involuntary tremor in his knees, stood stock still. The voice was high and
brittle, like dry twigs being broken, surely not one he had ever heard before. There was a shuffling
sound as the person who had been speaking moved a step closer. Greg turned, holding his breath,
his eyes straining to see in the dark room.
The upper part of the figure before him was still in darkness. The lower half was in the dim
rectangle of light that fell unevenly from the window. There were two feet, in cracked, dirty shoes from
which rose legs that were wrapped in rags.
“Who are you?” Greg hardly recognized his own voice.
“I’m Lemon Brown,” came the answer. “Who’re you?”
“Greg Ridley.”
“What you doing here?” The figure shuffled forward again, and Greg took a small step
backward.
“It’s raining,” Greg said.
“I can see that,” the figure said.
The person who called himself Lemon Brown peered forward, and Greg could see him clearly.
He was an old man. His black, heavily wrinkled face was surrounded by a halo of crinkly white hair and
whiskers that seemed to separate his head from the layers of dirty coats piled on his smallish frame. His
pants were bagged to the knee, where they were met with rags that went down to the old shoes. The
rags were held on with strings, and there was a rope around his middle. Greg relaxed. He had seen the
man before, picking through the trash on the corner and pulling clothes out of a Salvation Army box.
There was no sign of a razor that could “cut a week into nine days.”
“What are you doing here?” Greg asked.
“This is where I’m staying,” Lemon Brown said. “What you here for?”
“Told you it was raining out,” Greg said, leaning against the back of the couch until he felt it give
slightly.
“Ain’t you got no home?”
“I got a home,” Greg answered.
“You ain’t one of them bad boys looking for my treasure, is you?” Lemon Brown cocked his head
to one side and squinted one eye. “Because I told you I got me a razor.”
“I’m not looking for your treasure,” Greg answered, smiling. “If you have one.”
“What you mean, if I have one.” Lemon Brown said. “Every man got a treasure. You don’t know
that, you must be a fool!”
“Sure,” Greg said as he sat on the sofa and put one leg over the back. “What do you have, gold
coins?”
“Don’t worry none about what I got,” Lemon Brown said. “You know who I am?”
32
“You told me your name was orange or lemon or something like that.”
“Lemon Brown,” the old man said, pulling back his shoulders as he did so,” they used to call me
Sweet Lemon Brown.”
“Sweet Lemon?” Greg asked.
“Yessir. Sweet Lemon Brown. They used to say I sung the blues so sweet that if I sang at a
funeral, the dead would commence to rocking with the beat. Used to travel all over Mississippi and as
far as Monroe, Louisiana, and east on over to Macon, Georgia. You mean you ain’t never heard of Sweet
Lemon Brown?”
“Afraid not,” Greg said. “What…happened to you?”
“Hard times, boy. Hard times always after a poor man. One day I got tired, sat down to rest a
spell and felt a tap on my shoulder. Hard times caught up with me.”
“Sorry about that.”
“What you doing here? How come you don’t go in home when the rain come? Rain don’t bother
you young folks none.”
“Just didn’t.” Greg looked away.
“I used to have a knotty-headed boy just like you.” Lemon Brown had half walked, half shuffled
back to the corner and sat down against the wall. “Had them big eyes like you got. I used to call them
moon eyes. Look into them moon eyes and see anything you want.”
“How come you gave up singing the blues?” Greg asked.
“Didn’t give it up,” Lemon Brown said. “You don’t give up the blues; they give you up. After a
while you do good for yourself, and it ain’t nothing but foolishness singing about how hard you got it.
Ain’t that right?”
“I guess so.”
“What’s that noise?” Lemon Brown asked, suddenly sitting upright.
Greg listened, and he heard a noise outside. He looked at Lemon Brown and saw the old man
pointing toward the window.
Greg went to the window and saw three men, neighborhood thugs, on the stoop. One was
carrying a length of pipe. Greg looked back toward Lemon Brown, who moved quietly across the room
to the window. The old man looked out, then beckoned frantically for Greg to follow him. For a moment
Greg couldn’t move. The he found himself following Lemon Brown into the hallway and up the darkened
stairs. Greg followed as closely as he could. The reached the top of the stairs, and Greg felt Lemon
Brown’s hand first lying on his shoulder, then probing down his arm until he took Greg’s hand into his
own as they crouched in the darkness.
“They’s bad men,” Lemon Brown whispered. His breath was warm against Greg’s skin.
“Hey! Rag man!” A voice called. “We know you in here. What you got up under them rags? You
got any money?”
Silence.
“We don’t want to have to come in and hurt you, old man, but we don’t mind if we have to.”
Lemon Brown squeezed Greg’s hand in his own hard, gnarled fist.
There was a banging downstairs and a light as the men entered. They banged around noisily,
calling for the rag man.
“We heard you talking about your treasure.” The voice was slurred. “We just want to see it,
that’s all.”
“You sure he’s here?” One voice seemed to come from the room with the sofa. “Yeah, he stays
here every night.”
“There’s another room over there; I’m going to take a look. You got that flashlight?”
“Yeah, here, take the pipe too.”
33
Greg opened his mouth to quiet the sound of his breath as he sucked it in uneasily. A beam of
light hit the wall a few feet opposite him, then went out.
“Ain’t nobody in that room,” a voice said. “You think he gone or something?”
“I don’t know,” came the answer. “All I know is that I heard him talking about some kind of
treasure. You know they found that shopping bag lady with that load of money in her bags.”
“Yeah. You think he’s upstairs?”
“HEY, OLD MAN, ARE YOU UP THERE?”
Silence.
“Watch my back. I’m going up.”
There was a footstep on the stairs, and the beam from the flashlight danced crazily along the
peeling wallpaper. Greg held his breath. There was another step and a loud crashing noise as the man
banged the pipe against the wooden banister. Greg could feel his temples throb as the man slowly
neared them. Greg thought about the pipe, wondering what he would do when the man reached
them—what he could do.
Then Lemon Brown released his hand and moved toward the top of the stairs. Greg looked
around and saw stairs going up to the next floor. He tried waving to Lemon Brown, hoping the old man
would see him in the dim light and follow him to the next floor. Maybe, Greg thought, the man wouldn’t
follow them up there. Suddenly, though, Lemon Brown stood at the top of the stairs, both arms raised
high above his head.
“There he is!” A voice cried from below.
“Throw down your money, old man, so I won’t have to bash your head in!”
Lemon Brown didn’t move. Greg felt himself near panic. The steps came closer, and still Lemon
Brown didn’t move. He was an eerie sight, a bundle of rags standing at the top of the stairs, his shadow
on the wall looming over him. Maybe, the thought came to Greg, the scene could be even eerier.
Greg wet his lips, put his hands to his mouth and tried to make a sound. Nothing came out. He
swallowed hard, wet his lips once more and howled as evenly as he could.
“What’s that?”
As Greg howled, the light moved away from Lemon Brown, but not before Greg saw him hurl his
body down the stairs at the men who had come to take his treasure. There was a crashing noise, and
then footsteps. A rush of warm air came in as the downstairs door opened, then there was only an
ominous silence.
Greg stood on the landing. He listened, and after a while there was another sound on the
staircase.
“Mr. Brown?” he called.
“Yeah, it’s me,” came the answer. “I got their flashlight.”
Greg exhaled in relief as Lemon Brown made his way slowly back up the stairs.
“You OK?”
“Few bumps and bruises,” Lemon Brown said.
“I think I’d better be going,” Greg said, his breath returning to normal. “You’d better leave, too,
before they come back.”
“The may hang around for a while,” Lemon Brown said, “but they ain’t getting their nerve up to
come in here again. Not with crazy rag men and howling spooks. Best you stay a while till the coast is
clear. I’m heading out west tomorrow, out to east St. Louis.”
“They were talking about treasures,” Greg said. “You really have a treasure?”
“What I tell you? Didn’t I tell you every man got a treasure?” Lemon Brown said. “You want to
see mine?”
“If you want to show it to me,” Greg shrugged.
“Let’s look out the window first, see what them scoundrels be doing,” Lemon Brown said.
34
They followed the oval beam of the flashlight into one of the rooms and looked out the window.
They saw the men who had tried to take the treasure sitting on the curb near the corner. One of them
had his pants leg up, looking at his knee.
“You sure you’re not hurt?” Greg asked Lemon Brown.
“Nothing that ain’t been hurt before,” Lemon Brown said. “When you get as old as me all you
say when something hurts is, ‘Howdy, Mr. Pain, sees you back again.’ Then when Mr. Pain see he can’t
worry you none, he go on mess with somebody else.”
Greg smiled.
“Here, you hold this.” Lemon Brown gave Greg the flashlight.
He sat on the floor near Greg and carefully untied the strings that held the rags on his right leg.
When he took the rags away, Greg saw a piece of plastic. The old man carefully took off the plastic and
unfolded it. He revealed some yellowed newspaper clippings and a battered harmonica.
“There it be,” he said, nodding his head. “There it be.”
Greg looked at the old man, saw the distant look in his eye, then turned to the clippings. They
told of Sweet Lemon Brown, a blues singer and harmonica player who was appearing at different
theaters in the South. One of the clippings said he had been the hit of the show,
although not the headliner. All of the clippings were reviews of shows Lemon Brown had been in more
than fifty years ago. Greg looked at the harmonica. It was dented badly on one side, with the reed holes
on one end nearly closed.
“I used to travel around and make money to feed my wife and Jesse—that’s my boy’s name.
Used to feed them good, too. Then his mama died, and he stayed with his mama’s sister. He growed up
to be a man, and when the war come he saw fit to go off and fight in it. I didn’t have nothing to give him
except these things that told him who I was, and what he come from. If you know your pappy did
something, you know you can do something too.
“Anyway, he went off to war, and I went off still playing and singing. ‘Course by then I wasn’t as
much as I used to be, not without somebody to make it worth the while. You know what I mean?”
“Yeah.” Greg nodded, not quite really knowing.
“I traveled around, and one time I come home, and there was this letter saying Jesse got killed in
the war. Broke my heart, it truly did.
“They sent back what he had with him over there, and what it was is this old mouth fiddle and
these clippings. Him carrying it around with him like that told me it meant something to him. That was
my treasure, and when I give it to him he treated it just like that, a treasure. Ain’t that something?”
“Yeah, I guess so,” Greg said.
“You guess so?” Lemon Brown’s voice rose an octave as he started to put his treasure back into
the plastic. “Well, you got to guess ‘cause you sure don’t know nothing. Don’t know enough to get home
when it’s raining.”
“I guess…I mean, you’re right.”
“You OK for a youngster,” the old man said as he tied the strings around his leg, “better than
those scalawags what come here looking for my treasure. That’s for sure.”
“You really think that treasure of yours was worth fighting for?” Greg asked. “Against a pipe?”
“What else a man got ‘cepting what he can pass on to his son, or his daughter, if she be his
oldest?” Lemon Brown said. “For a big-headed buy you sure do ask the foolishest questions.”
Lemon Brown got up after patting his rags in place and looked out the window again.
“Looks like they’re gone. You get on out of here and get yourself home. I’ll be watching from the
window so you’ll be all right.”
Lemon Brown went down the stairs behind Greg. When they reached the front door the old
man looked out first, saw the street was clear and told Greg to scoot on home.
“You sure you’ll be OK?” Greg asked.
35
“Now didn’t I tell you I was going to east St. Louis in the morning?” Lemon Brown asked. “Don’t
that sound OK to you?”
“Sure it does,” Greg said. “Sure it does. And you take care of that treasure of yours.”
“That I’ll do,” Lemon said, the wrinkles around his eyes suggesting a smile. “That I’ll do.”
The night had warmed and the rain had stopped, leaving puddles at the curbs. Greg didn’t even
want to think how late it was. He thought ahead of what his father would say and wondered if he should
tell him about Lemon Brown. He thought about it until he reached his stoop, and decided against it.
Lemon Brown would be OK, Greg thought, with his memories and his treasure.
Greg pushed the button over the bell marked Ridley, thought of the lecture he knew his father
would give him, and smiled.
36
“Charles Dickens: Six things he gave the modern world”
by Alex Hudson
With the 200th birthday of Charles Dickens quickly approaching, and an entire series of events planned,
what is the lasting legacy of his work and his causes?
Charles Dickens is one of the most important writers of the 19th Century. But his influence goes far
beyond just literature. Many of his phrases, characters and ideas have engrained themselves in modern
culture.
Two centuries on, what are the things still seen today that Dickens first offered us in his writing?
A White Christmas
Modern commentators have described Dickens as "the man who invented Christmas". Not obviously the
religious festival, but the wider popular culture phenomenon that surrounds it.
In the early 19th Century, Christmas had become "scarcely worth a mention", according to critic and
writer Leigh Hunt.
As an example, the committee of the Carlton Club, which ran the Conservative Party at the time,
arranged ordinary business meetings on Christmas Day itself.
While Prince Albert is often credited with the revival of Christmas and the introduction of the Christmas
tree, many believe that Dickens's popular depictions of the festive period became a blueprint for
generations to come.
Specifically, the idea of a white Christmas - which was and still remains a relatively uncommon
occurrence in much of the UK - appears in A Christmas Carol as if it happened each and every year.
In his biography of Dickens, Peter Ackroyd wrote: "In view of the fact that Dickens can be said to have
almost singlehandedly created the modern idea of Christmas, it is interesting to note that in fact during
the first eight years of his life there was a white Christmas every year; so sometimes reality does actually
exist before the idealised image."
Writer and renowned Dickens expert GK Chesterton perhaps best summed up how the great author's
romantic view of Christmas has permeated throughout the world.
"Whether the Christmas visions would or would not convert Scrooge, they convert us," he wrote.
‘Dickensian Poverty
One of the things Dickens cared about most was those at the bottom. He was one of the first to offer an
unflinching look at the underclass and the poverty stricken in Victorian London.
And this was an area in which he had some experience.
His father had little skill in financial management and this eventually put him and all of his family in a
debtors' prison for six months.
The young Dickens worked in a cousin's shop, pasting labels on blacking bottles for six shillings a week.
After he became famous, Dickens helped popularise the term "red tape" to describe the bureaucracy in
positions of power that particularly hurt the weak and poor.
"Dickensian" has now become the easiest word to describe an unacceptable level of poverty.
37
In 2009, when president of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers wanted to talk about the
deprivation in some areas, it was not described as terrible or horrific but as "life mirroring the times of
Dickens".
This less than perfect England was described by other authors like Benjamin Disraeli and Mrs. Gaskell
but it is Dickens's view that has really resonated through the ages.
Modern Character Comedy
Dickens's live readings were said to be filled with humour and performance, with Dickens himself taking
on the accents and mannerisms of the characters he was portraying.
And it is the way the characters speak that often brings a smile from the reader.
"Quite a lot of the time, if you were simply to describe the plot situation of one of the set pieces that
you find very funny, it's not very funny at all," says Prof John Mullan, of University College London.
"But it is very funny. The extraordinary thing he does introduce to the novel is the comic potential of the
way people talk."
And some in the industry think that Dickens has done even more for the current crop of comedians.
"We're put off by this notion we have of Charles Dickens as this great Victorian novelist because it
implies that he's serious," says writer and comedian Armando Iannucci.
"In fact, I think he's the finest comedian we've ever produced. Much comedy today is conditioned by the
way Dickens wrote it in the 19th Century and comedy writers today owe a huge debt to him.
"It's that sense of the rhythms, the colloquialisms and the way we speak. In reality, we don't finish our
sentences and we all interrupt each other."
The Cinema
While everyone from Gwyneth Paltrow to Miss Piggy has taken a role in a film adaptation of Dickens's
work, many argue that he was as instrumental in creating the conventions of cinema as he was for
inspiring the content itself.
Russian film director and theorist Sergei Eisenstein said that important aspects of cinema were created
by the influence of Dickens on pioneering film director DW Griffith.
He argued that Dickens invented, among other things, the parallel montage - where two stories run
alongside each other - and the close-up.
"The idea that Dickens invented cinema is obviously nonsensical but he was a key and important
influence in its development," says Prof Graeme Smith, who wrote Dickens and the Dream of Cinema.
"Once film arrived, his work inspired an extraordinary amount of early cinema."
The BFI says that there were around 100 versions of Dickens's work recreated in film in the silent era
alone. And those adaptations continue to this day.
This is in large part because of the visual way Dickens wrote, creating painstaking depictions of places.
Prof Theodore Hovet, of Western Kentucky University, has argued that Dickens's influence stretches
further than just adaptations in modern cinema, actually providing themes and techniques that are still
used today.
For example, he says, the film Dirty Pretty Things' depiction of London pays "homage to a model
established by Dickens's compulsive wanderings of the city".
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Meaningful Names
The development of the characters in Dickens is often heralded as one of his greatest achievements.
The Dictionary of British Literary Characters lists 989 named characters in his work, including everyone
from Pickwick Papers' Arabella Allen right through to Our Mutual Friend's Eugene Wrayburn.
While characters in many novels before had used symbolic names, what Dickens did differently was
refine the practice to suggest character traits and their role.
Some are obvious - Mr M'Choakumchild, the teacher in Hard Times, or ambitious lawyer CJ Stryver in
The Tale of Two Cities - but others are less so.
In Great Expectations, Magwitch has a number of different interpretations - from a magpie representing
theft to Magi, a Biblical reference to the wise men.
This technique has since been used by everyone from James Joyce and Thomas Pynchon to F Scott
Fitzgerald and Martin Amis.
A couple of the most famous characters have become so recognisable that they have entered the
language as nouns - somebody mean-spirited or lacking generosity being described as a Scrooge, for
example.
But one phrase that does not come from a name is "What the dickens?"
Rather than coming from the author, it is believed to be a slang term for the devil and though its actual
origins are unknown, it first appeared prominently in Shakespeare's Merry Wives of Windsor, over 200
years before Dickens was born.
Our View of the Law
Bleak House, taking place as it does in the Court of Chancery before legal reforms in 1870, is a thinly
veiled attack on the judicial system of the time. The current view of lawyers - less than a quarter of
people in the UK trust them - seems to be at least partly inspired by characters such as the novel's Mr
Tulkinghorn.
"No two books outside the bounds of technical law are more worth reading for law students than
Pickwick Papers and Bleak House," Zechariah Chafee Jr once wrote in the Harvard Law Review.
"Even a trained trial lawyer, however, is puzzled by some of the legal points brought up by Dickens,
because they have fortunately passed forever out of the realm of living law."
Legal historian Sir William Holdsworth noted the importance of Dickensian record in a lecture given in
1927.
"The treatment by Dickens of various aspects of the law and the lawyers of his day is a very valuable
addition to our authorities," he said.
"Not only for that period, but also for earlier periods in our legal history."
But how much do the issues that Dickens highlighted still remain today?
"Central to it, actually, is something that remains a problem," says senior barrister Anthony Arlidge QC.
"Very often, particularly with small civil claims, the cost of the legal proceedings is bound to exceed the
damages that are obtained."
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“History of Christmas”
BBC
It's hard to imagine now, but at the beginning of the 19th century Christmas was hardly celebrated.
Many businesses did not even consider it a holiday. However by the end of the century it had become
the biggest annual celebration and took on the form that we recognise today.
The transformation happened quickly, and came from all sectors of society.
Many attribute the change to Queen Victoria, and it was her marriage to the German-born Prince Albert
that introduced some of the most prominent aspects of Christmas. In 1848 the Illustrated London News
published a drawing of the royal family celebrating around a decorated Christmas tree, a tradition that
was reminiscent of Prince Albert's childhood in Germany. Soon every home in Britain had a tree
bedecked with candles, sweets, fruit, homemade decorations and small gifts.
In 1843 Henry Cole commissioned an artist to design a card for Christmas. The illustration showed a
group of people around a dinner table and a Christmas message. At one shilling each, these were pricey
for ordinary Victorians and so were not immediately accessible. However the sentiment caught on and
many children - Queen Victoria's included – were encouraged to make their own Christmas cards. In this
age of industrialisation colour printing technology quickly became more advanced, causing the price of
card production to drop significantly. Together with the introduction of the halfpenny postage rate, the
Christmas card industry took off. By the 1880s the sending of cards had become hugely popular, creating
a lucrative industry that produced 11.5 million cards in 1880 alone. The commercialisation of Christmas
was well on its way.
Another commercial Christmas industry was borne by Victorians in 1848 when a British confectioner,
Tom Smith, invented a bold new way to sell sweets. Inspired by a trip to Paris where he saw bon bons –
sugared almonds wrapped in twists of paper – he came up with the idea of the Christmas cracker: a
simple package filled with sweets that snapped when pulled apart. The sweets were replaced by small
gifts and paper hats in the late Victorian period, and remain in this form as an essential part of a modern
Christmas.
Decorating the home at Christmas also became a more elaborate affair. The medieval tradition of using
evergreens continued, however the style and placement of these decorations became more important.
The old custom of simply decking walls and windows with sprigs and twigs was sniffed at. Uniformity,
order and elegance were encouraged. There were instructions on how to make elaborate synthetic
decorations for those residing in towns. In 1881 Cassell's Family Magazine gave strict directions to the
lady of the house: "To bring about a general feeling of enjoyment, much depends on the surroundings…
It is worth while to bestow some little trouble on the decoration of the rooms".
Gift giving had traditionally been at New Year but moved as Christmas became more important to the
Victorians. Initially gifts were rather modest – fruit, nuts, sweets and small handmade trinkets. These
were usually hung on the Christmas tree. However, as gift giving became more central to the festival,
and the gifts became bigger and shop-bought, they moved under the tree.
The Christmas feast has its roots from before the Middle Ages, but it's during the Victorian period that
the dinner we now associate with Christmas began to take shape. Examination of early Victorian recipes
shows that mince pies were initially made from meat, a tradition dating back to Tudor times. However,
during the 19th century there was a revolution in the composition of this festive dish. Mixes without
meat began to gain popularity within some of the higher echelons of society and became the mince pies
we know today.
40
The roast turkey also has its beginnings in Victorian Britain. Previously other forms of roasted meat such
as beef and goose were the centrepiece of the Christmas dinner. The turkey was added to this by the
more wealthy sections of the community in the 19th century, but its perfect size for a middle class
family gathering meant it became the dominant dish by the beginning of the 20th century.
While carols were not new to the Victorians, it was a tradition that they actively revived and
popularised. The Victorians considered carols to be a delightful form of musical entertainment, and a
pleasure well worth cultivating. Old words were put to new tunes and the first significant collection of
carols was published in 1833 for all to enjoy.
The Victorians also transformed the idea of Christmas so that it became centred around the family. The
preparation and eating of the feast, decorations and gift giving, entertainments and parlour games - all
were essential to the celebration of the festival and were to be shared by the whole family.
While Charles Dickens did not invent the Victorian Christmas, his book A Christmas Carol is credited with
helping to popularise and spread the traditions of the festival. Its themes of family, charity, goodwill,
peace and happiness encapsulate the spirit of the Victorian Christmas, and are very much a part of the
Christmas we celebrate today.
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“Study: Experience makes us happier than possessions”
by Elizabeth Landau
CNN) -- Even in tough economic times, you may find yourself with a bit of cash to spare. You've been
working hard, and you want to treat yourself. Should you spend it on an experience, such as a baseball
game or concert, or a material object?
Psychological research suggests that, in the long run, experiences make people happier than
possessions.
That's in part because the initial joy of acquiring a new object, such as a new car, fades over time as
people become accustomed to seeing it every day, experts said. Experiences, on the other hand,
continue to provide happiness through memories long after the event occurred.
Ryan Howell, assistant professor of psychology at San Francisco State University, presented his findings
this week at the Society for Personality and Social Psychology annual meeting.
The study looked at 154 people enrolled at San Francisco State University, with an average age of about
25. Participants answered questions about a recent purchase -- either material or experiential -- they
personally made in the last three months with the intention of making themselves happy.
While most people were generally happy with the purchase regardless of what it was, those who wrote
about experiences tended to show a higher satisfaction at the time and after the experience had passed.
The most striking difference was in how participants said others around them reacted to either the
purchased object or experience. Experiences led to more happiness in others than purchases did. A
sense of relatedness to others -- getting closer to friends and family -- may be one of the reasons why
experiences generate more happiness.
"When people spend money on life experiences, whether they also take someone with them or buy an
extra ticket or whatever, most of our life experiences involve other individuals," Howell said. People
were fulfilling their need for social bonding while having these experiences, he said.
Another reason for increased happiness in experiences, the researchers found, was that people felt a
greater sense of vitality or "being alive" during the experience and in reflection, Howell said.
"As nice as your new computer is, it's not going to make you feel alive," he said.
Most psychologists who study the phenomenon say people adapt to a new purchase in six to eight
weeks, up to a maximum of three months, Howell said. That means the initial pleasure we get from a
new possession generally fades in a matter of months.
Howell's study builds on earlier work by Thomas Gilovich, professor and chairman of the psychology
department at Cornell University. Gilovich and colleague Leaf Van Boven's seminal 2003 paper "To do or
to have: That is the question" found similar results about possessions bringing less happiness than
experiences.
Experts also point out that people are less self-conscious when comparing experiences than they are
about possessions. It will probably bother you more that your friend's home theater is better than yours
than if your friend saw more sights on her South Seas vacation, Gilovich said.
Experiences form "powerful and important memories that I wouldn't trade for anything in the world,"
Gilovich said.
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It's not just individuals who should be thinking about investing in experiences when making purchasing
choices -- policy makers should also keep this reasoning in mind for their communities, he said.
"If you create municipalities with more parks, bike trails, more hiking trails that make experiences
easier, then I think you're going to have a happier population," he said.
With Valentine's Day coming up, does this research mean you should give your honey a nice dinner or
weekend getaway rather than a material present, such as a necklace or watch?
The issue of happiness conferred to others has been studied less, so the answer is unclear, experts said.
While Howell would expect this principle of experiences over possessions to still apply, Gilovich agreed
that it may, but also points out that the act of giving or receiving an object as a gift is an experience in
itself.
"Gifts of material possessions often become keepsakes and have sentimental value that increase with
time, instead of diminishing like most material goods," Gilovich said.
43
“Do Experiences or Material Goods Make Us Happier?”
ScienceDaily
Should I spend money on a vacation or a new computer? Will an experience or an object make me
happier? A new study in the Journal of Consumer Research says it depends on different factors, including
how materialistic you are.
Even though conventional wisdom says choose the vacation, authors Leonardo Nicolao, Julie R. Irwin
(both University of Texas at Austin), and Joseph K. Goodman (Washington University, St. Louis) say the
answer is more complicated than previously thought.
"Dating as early as David Hume and through Tibor Scitovsky and many others, the sentiment has been
that individuals will be happier if they spend their money on experiences (theatre, concerts, and
vacations) as opposed to material purchases (fancy cars, bigger houses, and gadgets)" write the authors.
The authors say this advice holds true for purchases that turn out well. But when it comes to negative
purchases (a disappointing sofa, a bad vacation), their research shows that experiences decrease
happiness more than material goods. "In other words, we show that the recommendation should
include a caveat: Purchases that decrease happiness are less damaging when they are material
purchases than when they are experiential purchases," the authors explain.
Highly materialistic individuals, the authors found, were equally happy with their positive purchases and
equally unhappy with negative purchases whether they were experiences or material goods. The
researchers also found that emotional intensity decreases more quickly after material purchases than
experiential ones.
Consumers should be especially cautious when choosing among experiences, say the authors, because
making a negative choice can lead to lasting unhappiness with the experience. Risky material purchases,
on the other hand, are less potentially damaging.
Overall, the authors agree with conventional wisdom: "Given a good probability of a positive experience,
our research echoes past research in suggesting that money is well spent on vacations, concerts,
amusement parks, and restaurants over comparably priced objects and trinkets," they conclude.
44
“The Eighth Tuesday We Talk About Money”
Tuesdays with Morrie
by Mitch Albom
I held up the newspaper so that Morrie could see it:
I DON'T WANT MY TOMBSTONE TO READ. I NEVER OWNED A NETWORK."
Morrie laughed, then shook his head. The morning sun was coming through the window behind him,
falling on the pink flowers of the hibiscus plant that sat on the sill. The quote was from Ted Turner, the
billionaire media mogul, founder of CNN, who had been lamenting his inability to snatch up the CBS
network in a corporate megadeal. I had brought the story to Morrie this morning because I wondered if
Turner ever found himself in my old professor's position, his breath disappearing, his body turning to
stone, his days being crossed off the calendar one by one-would he really be crying over owning a
network?
"It's all part of the same problem, Mitch," Morrie said. "We put our values in the wrong things. And it
leads to very disillusioned lives. I think we should talk about that."
Morrie was focused. There were good days and bad days now. He was having a good day. The night
before, he had been entertained by a local a cappella group that had come to the house to perform, and
he relayed the story excitedly, as if the Ink Spots themselves had dropped by for a visit. Morrie's love for
music was strong even before he got sick, but now it was so intense, it moved him to tears. He would
listen to opera sometimes at night, closing his eyes, riding along with the magnificent voices as they
dipped and soared.
"You should have heard this group last night, Mitch. Such a sound!"
Morrie had always been taken with simple pleasures, singing, laughing, dancing. Now, more than ever,
material things held little or no significance. When people die, you always hear the expression "You can't
take it with you." Morrie seemed to know that a long time ago.
"We've got a form of brainwashing going on in our country," Morrie sighed. "Do you know how they
brainwash people? They repeat something over and over. And that's what we do in this country. Owning
things is good. More money is good. More property is good. More commercialism is good. More is good.
More is good. We repeat it-and have it repeated to us-over and over until nobody bothers to even think
otherwise. The average person is so fogged up by all this, he has no perspective on what's really
important anymore.
"Wherever I went in my life, I met people wanting to gobble up something new. Gobble up a new car.
Gobble up a new piece of property. Gobble up the latest toy. And then they wanted to tell you about it.
`Guess what I got? Guess what I got?'
"You know how I always interpreted that? These were people so hungry for love that they were
accepting substitutes. They were embracing material things and expecting a sort of hug back. But it
never works. You can't substitute material things for love or for gentleness or for tenderness or for a
sense of comradeship.
"Money is not a substitute for tenderness, and power is not a substitute for tenderness. I can tell you, as
I'm sitting here dying, when you most need it, neither money nor power will give you the feeling you're
looking for, no matter how much of them you have."
I glanced around Morrie's study. It was the same today as it had been the first day I arrived. The books
held their same places on the shelves. The papers cluttered the same old desk. The outside rooms had
45
not been improved or upgraded. In fact, Morrie really hadn't bought anything new-except medical
equipment-in a long, long time, maybe years. The day he learned that he was terminally ill was the day
he lost interest in his purchasing power.
So the TV was the same old model, the car that Charlotte drove was the same old model, the dishes and
the silverware and the towels-all the same. And yet the house had changed so drastically. It had filled
with love and teaching and communication. It had filled with friendship and family and honesty and
tears. It had filled with colleagues and students and meditation teachers and therapists and nurses and a
cappella groups. It had become, in a very real way, a wealthy home, even though Morrie's bank account
was rapidly depleting.
"There's a big confusion in this country over what we want versus what we need," Morrie said. "You
need food, you want a chocolate sundae. You have to be honest with yourself. You don't need the latest
sports car, you don't need the biggest house.
"The truth is, you don't get satisfaction from those things. You know what really gives you satisfaction?"
What?
"Offering others what you have to give."
You sound like a Boy Scout.
"I don't mean money, Mitch. I mean your time. Your concern. Your storytelling. It's not so hard. There's
a senior center that opened near here. Dozens of elderly people come there every day. If you're a young
man or young woman and you have a skill, you are asked to come and teach it. Say you know
computers. You come there and teach them computers. You are very welcome there. And they are very
grateful. This is how you start to get respect, by offering something that you have.
"There are plenty of places to do this. You don't need to have a big talent. There are lonely people in
hospitals and shelters who only want some companionship. You play cards with a lonely older man and
you find new respect for yourself, because you are needed. "Remember what I said about finding a
meaningful life? I wrote it down, but now I can recite it: Devote yourself to loving others, devote
yourself to your community around you, and devote yourself to creating something that gives you
purpose and meaning.
"You notice," he added, grinning, "there's nothing in there about a salary."
I jotted some of the things Morrie was saying on a yellow pad. I did this mostly because I didn't want
him to see my eyes, to know what I was thinking, that I had been, for much of my life since graduation,
pursuing these very things he had been railing against-bigger toys, nicer house. Because I worked among
rich and famous athletes, I convinced myself that my needs were realistic, my greed inconsequential
compared to theirs.
This was a smokescreen. Morrie made that obvious. "Mitch, if you're trying to show off for people at the
top, forget it. They will look down at you anyhow. And if you're trying to show off for people at the
bottom, forget it. They will only envy you. Status will get you nowhere. Only an open heart will allow you
to float equally between everyone."
He paused, then looked at me. "I'm dying, right?" Yes.
"Why do you think it's so important for me to hear other people's problems? Don't I have enough pain
and suffering of my own?
46
"Of course I do. But giving to other people is what makes me feel alive. Not my car or my house. Not
what I look like in the mirror. When I give my time, when I can make someone smile after they were
feeling sad, it's as close to healthy as I ever feel.
"Do the kinds of things that come from the heart. When you do, you won't be dissatisfied, you won't be
envious, you won't be longing for somebody else's things. On the contrary, you'll be overwhelmed with
what comes back."
He coughed and reached for the small bell that lay on the chair. He had to poke a few times at it, and I
finally picked it up and put it in his hand.
"Thank you," he whispered. He shook it weakly, trying to get Connie's attention.
"This Ted Turner guy," Morrie said, "he couldn't think of anything else for his tombstone?"
'Each night, when I go to sleep, I die. And the next morning, when I wake up, I am reborn. "
--MAHATMA GANDHI
47
“How to Write a Memoir”
by William Zinnser
One of the saddest sentences I know is “I wish I had asked my mother about that.” Or my father. Or my
grandmother. Or my grandfather. As every parent knows, our children are not as fascinated by our
fascinating lives as we are. Only when they have children of their own—and feel the first twinges of their
own advancing age—do they suddenly want to know more about their family heritage and all its
accretions of anecdote and lore. “What exactly were those stories my dad used to tell about coming to
America?” “Where exactly was that farm in the Midwest where my mother grew up?”
Writers are the custodians of memory, and that’s what you must become if you want to leave some kind
of record of your life and of the family you were born into. That record can take many shapes. It can be a
formal memoir—a careful act of literary construction. Or it can be an informal family history, written to
tell your children and your grandchildren about the family they were born into. It can be the oral history
that you extract by tape recorder from a parent or a grandparent too old or too sick to do any writing.
Or it can be anything else you want it to be: some hybrid mixture of history and reminiscence. Whatever
it is, it’s an important kind of writing. Too often memories die with their owner, and too often time
surprises us by running out.
My father, a businessman with no literary pretensions, wrote two family histories in his old age. It was
the perfect task for a man with few gifts for self-amusement. Sitting in his favorite green leather
armchair in an apartment high above Park Avenue in New York, he wrote a history of his side of the
family—the Zinssers and the Scharmanns—going back to 19th century Germany. Then he wrote a
history of the family shellac business on West 59th Street, William Zinsser & Co., that his grandfather
founded in 1849. He wrote with a pencil on a yellow legal pad, never pausing—then or ever again—to
rewrite. He had no patience with any enterprise that obliged him to reexamine or slow down. On the
golf course, walking toward his ball, he would assess the situation, pick a club out of the bag, and swing
at the ball as he approached it, hardly breaking stride.
When my father finished writing his histories he had them typed, mimeographed, and bound in a plastic
cover. He gave a copy, personally inscribed, to each of his three daughters, to their husbands, to me, to
my wife, and to his 15 grandchildren, some of whom couldn’t yet read. I like the fact that they all got
their own copy; it recognized each of them as an equal partner in the family saga. How many of those
grandchildren spent any time with the histories I have no idea. But I’ll bet some of them did, and I like to
think that those 15 copies are now squirreled away somewhere in their houses from Maine to California,
waiting for the next generation.
What my father did strikes me as a model for a family history that doesn’t aspire to be anything more;
the idea of having it published wouldn’t have occurred to him. There are many good reasons for writing
that have nothing to do with being published. Writing is a powerful search mechanism, and one of its
satisfactions is that it allows you to come to terms with your life narrative. It also allows you to work
through some of life’s hardest knocks—loss, grief, illness, addiction, disappointment, failure—and to
find understanding and solace.
My father’s two histories have steadily grown on me. At first I don’t think I was as generous toward
them as I should have been; probably I condescended to the ease with which he brought off a process I
found so hard. But over the years I’ve often found myself dipping into them to remind myself of some
long-lost relative, or to check some long-lost fact of New York geography, and with every reading I
admire the writing more.
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Above all, there’s the matter of voice. Not being a writer, my father never worried about finding his
“style.” He just wrote the way he talked, and now, when I read his sentences, I hear his personality and
his humor, his idioms and his usages, many of them an echo of his college years in the early 1900s. I also
hear his honesty. He wasn’t sentimental about blood ties, and I smile at his terse appraisals of Uncle X,
“a second-rater,” or Cousin Y, who “never amounted to much.”
When you write your own family history, don’t try to be a “writer.” It now occurs to me that my father,
who didn’t try to be a writer, was a more natural writer than I am, with my constant fiddling and fussing.
Be yourself and your readers will follow you anywhere. Try to commit an act of writing and your readers
will jump overboard to get away. Your product is you. The crucial transaction in memoir and personal
history is the transaction between you and your remembered experiences and emotions.
In my father’s family history he didn’t dodge the central trauma of his childhood: the abrupt end of his
parents’ marriage when he and his brother Rudolph were still small boys. Their mother was the
daughter of a self-made German immigrant, H. B. Scharmann, who went to California as a teenager in a
covered wagon with the forty-niners and lost both his mother and his sister on the journey. Frida
Scharmann inherited his fierce pride and ambition, and when she married William Zinsser, a promising
young man in her circle of German-American friends, she saw him as the answer to her cultural
aspirations. They would spend their evenings going to concerts and to the opera and holding musical
salons. But the promising husband evidently turned out to have no such yearnings. Home was for falling
asleep in his chair after dinner.
How bitterly his lassitude must have dawned on the young Frida Zinsser I can imagine from knowing her
as an older woman, endlessly pushing herself to Carnegie Hall, playing Beethoven and Brahms on the
piano, traveling to Europe and learning foreign languages, prodding my father and my sisters and me to
cultural self-improvement. Her drive to fulfill the broken dreams of her marriage never faltered. But she
had the German penchant for telling people off, and she died alone at 81, having scolded away all her
friends.
I wrote about her once, many years ago, in a memoir for a book called Five Boyhoods. Describing the
grandmother I knew as a boy, I praised her strength but also noted that she was a difficult presence in
our lives. After the book came out, my mother defended the mother-in-law who had made her own life
far from easy. “Grandma was really quite shy,” she said, “and she wanted to be liked.” Maybe so; the
truth is somewhere between my mother’s version and mine. But she was like that to me. That was my
remembered truth, and that’s how I wrote it.
I mention this because one of the questions often asked by memoir writers is: should I write from the
point of view of the child I once was, or of the adult I am now? The strongest memoirs, I think, are those
that preserve the unity of a remembered time and place: books like Russell Baker’s Growing Up, or V. S.
Pritchett’s A Cab at the Door, or Jill Ker Conway’s The Road from Coorain, which recall what it was like to
be a child or an adolescent in a world of adults contending with life’s adversities.
But if you prefer the other route—to write about your younger years from the wiser perspective of your
older years—that memoir will have its own integrity. One good example is Poets in Their Youth, in which
Eileen Simpson recalls her life with her first husband, John Berryman, and his famously self-destructive
fellow poets, including Robert Lowell and Delmore Schwartz, whose demons she was too young as a
bride to understand. When she revisited that period as an older woman in her memoir she had become
a writer and a practicing psychotherapist, and she used that clinical knowledge to create an invaluable
portrait of a major school of American poetry at the high tide of its creativity. But these are two
different kinds of writing. Choose one.
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My father’s family history told me details about his mother’s marriage that I didn’t have when I wrote
my memoir. Now, knowing the facts, I can understand the disappointments that made her the woman
she became, and if I were to take another shot at the family saga today I would bring to it a lifetime of
trying to fathom its Germanic storms and stresses. (My mother’s family of New England Yankees—
Knowltons and Joyces—managed to get through life without emotional melodrama.) I would also bring
to it a lifetime of regret over the tremendous hole at the center of my father’s story. In his two histories
his father gets scant mention and no forgiveness; all sympathy goes to the aggrieved young divorcée and
her lifelong grit.
Yet some of my father’s most attractive qualities—the charm, the humor, the lightness, the bluest of
blue eyes—must have come from the Zinsser side, not from the brooding, brown-eyed Scharmanns. I’ve
always felt deprived of knowing more about that missing grandfather. Whenever I asked my father
about him, he changed the subject and had no stories to tell. When you write your family history, be a
recording angel and record everything your descendants might want to know.
This brings me to another question that memoir writers often ask: What about the privacy of the people
I write about? Should I leave out things that might offend or hurt my relatives? What will my sister
think?
Don’t worry about that problem in advance. Your first job is to get your story down as you remember
it—now. Don’t look over your shoulder to see what relatives are perched there. Say what you want to
say, freely and honestly, and finish the job. Then take up the privacy issue. If you wrote your family
history only for your family, there’s no legal or ethical need to show it to anyone else. But if you have in
mind a broader audience— a mailing to friends or a possible book—you may want to show your
relatives the pages in which they are mentioned. That’s a basic courtesy; nobody wants to be surprised
in print. It also gives them their moment to ask you to take certain passages out—which you may or may
not agree to do.
Finally, it’s your story. You’re the one who has done all the work. If your sister has a problem with your
memoir, she can write her own memoir, and it will be just as valid as yours; nobody has a monopoly on
the shared past. Some of your relatives will wish you hadn’t said some of the things you said, especially
if you reveal various family traits that are less than lovable. But I believe that at some level most families
want to have a record left of their effort to be a family, however flawed that effort was, and they will
give you their blessing and will thank you for taking on the job—if you do it honestly and not for the
wrong reasons.
What are the wrong reasons? Let me take you back to the memoir-crazed 1990s. Until that decade,
memoir writers drew a veil over their most shameful experiences and thoughts; certain civilities were
still agreed on by society. Then talk shows came into their own and shame went out the window.
Suddenly no remembered episode was too squalid, no family too dysfunctional, to be trotted out for the
titillation of the masses on cable TV and in magazines and books. The result was an avalanche of
memoirs that were little more than therapy, their authors using the form to wallow in self-revelation
and self-pity and to bash everyone who had ever done them wrong. Writing was out and whining was in.
But nobody remembers those books today—readers won’t connect with whining. Don’t use your
memoir to air old grievances and to settle old scores; get rid of that anger somewhere else. The
memoirs that we do remember from the 1990s are the ones that were written with love and
forgiveness, like Mary Karr’s The Liars’ Club, Frank McCourt’s Angela’s Ashes, Tobias Wolff’s This Boy’s
Life, and Pete Hamill’s A Drinking Life. Although the childhoods they describe were painful, the writers
are as hard on their younger selves as they are on their elders. We are not victims, they want us to
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know. We come from a tribe of fallible people and we have survived without resentment to get on with
our lives. For them, writing a memoir became an act of healing.
It can also be an act of healing for you. If you make an honest transaction with your own humanity and
with the humanity of the people who crossed your life, no matter how much pain they caused you or
you caused them, readers will connect with your journey.
Now comes the hard part: how to organize the damn thing. Most people embarking on a memoir are
paralyzed by the size of the task. What to put in? What to leave out? Where to start? Where to stop?
How to shape the story? The past looms over them in a thousand fragments, defying them to impose on
it some kind of order. Because of that anxiety, many memoirs linger for years half written, or never get
written at all.
What can be done?
You must make a series of reducing decisions. For example: in a family history, one big decision would
be to write about only one branch of the family. Families are complex organisms, especially if you trace
them back several generations. Decide to write about your mother’s side of the family or your father’s
side, but not both. Return to the other one later and make it a separate project.
Remember that you are the protagonist in your own memoir, the tour guide. You must find a narrative
trajectory for the story you want to tell and never relinquish control. This means leaving out of your
memoir many people who don’t need to be there. Like siblings.
One of my students in a memoir class was a woman who wanted to write about the house in Michigan
where she grew up. Her mother had died, the house had been sold, and she and her father and her 10
sisters and brothers were about to meet at the house to dispose of its contents. Writing about that task,
she thought, would help her to understand her childhood in that large Catholic family. I agreed—it was a
perfect framework for a memoir—and I asked her how she was going to proceed.
She said she was going to start by interviewing her father and all her brothers and sisters to find out
how they remembered the house. I asked her if the story she wanted to write was their story. No, she
said, it was her story. In that case, I said, interviewing all those siblings would be an almost complete
waste of her time and energy. Only then did she begin to glimpse the proper shape of her story and to
prepare her mind for confronting the house and its memories. I saved her hundreds of hours of
interviewing and transcribing and trying to fit what she transcribed into her memoir, where it didn’t
belong. Remember: it’s your story. You only need to interview family members who have a unique
insight into a family situation, or an anecdote that unlocks a puzzle you were unable to solve.
Here’s another story from another class. A young Jewish woman named Helen Blatt was very eager to
write about her father’s experience as a survivor of the Holocaust. He had escaped from his village in
Poland at the age of 14—one of the few Jews to get away—and had made his way to Italy, to New
Orleans and, finally, to New York. Now he was 80, and his daughter asked him to go back with her to
that Polish village so she could hear about his early life and write his story. But he begged off; he was
too frail and the past was too painful.
So she made the trip on her own in 2004. She took notes and photographs and talked with people in the
village. But she couldn’t find enough facts to enable her to do justice to her father’s story, and she was
deeply upset about that. Her despair hung over the class.
51
For a few moments I couldn’t think of anything to tell her. Finally I said, “It’s not your father’s story.”
She gave me a look that I still remember as it dawned on her what I was saying.
“It’s your story,” I told her. I pointed out that nobody has enough facts— not even scholars of the
Holocaust—to reconstruct her father’s early life; too much of the Jewish past in Europe has been
obliterated. “If you write about your own search for your father’s past,” I said, “you’ll also tell the story
of his life and his heritage.”
I saw a heavy weight drop off her shoulders. She smiled a smile that none of us had seen before and said
she would get started on the story right away.
The course ended, and no paper was handed in. I called her and she said she was still writing and
needed more time. Then, one day, a 24-page manuscript arrived in the mail. It was called “Returning
Home,” and it described Helen Blatt’s pilgrimage to Plesna, a small rural town in southeastern Poland
that wasn’t even on the map. “Sixty-five years later,” she wrote, “I was the first member of the Blatt
family the town had seen since 1939.” Gradually making herself known to the townspeople, she found
that many of her father’s relatives—grandparents and uncles and aunts— were still remembered. When
one old man said, “You look just like your grandmother Helen,” she felt “an overwhelming sense of
safety and peacefulness.”
This is how her story ends:
After I returned home my father and I spent three straight days together. He watched every minute of
the four-hour video I made as if it were a masterpiece. He wanted to hear every detail of my trip: who I
met, where I went, what I saw, what foods I liked and disliked, and how I was treated. I assured him that
I was welcomed with open arms. Although I still have no photos of my family telling me what their faces
looked like, I now have a mental picture of their character. The fact that I was treated so well by
complete strangers is a reflection of the respect my grandparents earned from the community. I gave
my father boxes of letters and gifts from his old friends: Polish vodka and maps and framed photos and
drawings of Plesna.
As I told him my stories he looked like an excited child waiting to open his birthday present. The sadness
in his eyes also disappeared; he looked jubilant and giddy. When he saw his family’s property on my
video I expected to see him cry, and he did, but they were tears of joy. He seemed so proud, and I asked
him, “Daddy, what are you looking at with such pride? Is it your house?” He said, “No, it’s you! You have
become my eyes and ears and legs. Thank you for taking this trip. It makes me feel as if I’ve gone there
myself.”
My final reducing advice can be summed up in two words: think small. Don’t rummage around in your
past—or your family’s past—to find episodes that you think are “important” enough to be worthy of
including in your memoir. Look for small self-contained incidents that are still vivid in your memory. If
you still remember them it’s because they contain a universal truth that your readers will recognize
from their own life.
That turned out to be the main lesson I learned by writing a book in 2004 called Writing About Your Life.
It’s a memoir of my own life, but it’s also a teaching book—along the way I explain the reducing and
organizing decisions I made. I never felt that my memoir had to include all the important things that
ever happened to me—a common temptation when old people sit down to summarize their life journey.
On the contrary, many of the chapters in my book are about small episodes that were not objectively
52
“important” but that were important to me. Because they were important to me they also struck an
emotional chord with readers, touching a universal truth that was important to them.
One chapter is about serving in the army in World War II. Like most men of my generation, I recall that
war as the pivotal experience of my life. But in my memoir I don’t write anything about the war itself. I
just tell one story about one trip I took across North Africa after our troopship landed at Casablanca. My
fellow GIs and I were put on a train consisting of decrepit wooden boxcars called “forty-and-eights,” so
named because they were first used by the French in World War I to transport forty men or eight
horses. The words QUARANTE HOMMES OU HUIT CHEVAUX were still stenciled on them. For six days I
sat in the open door of that boxcar with my feet hanging out over Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia. It was
the most uncomfortable ride I ever took—and the best. I couldn’t believe I was in North Africa. I was the
sheltered son of Northeastern WASPs; nobody in my upbringing or my education had ever mentioned
the Arabs. Now, suddenly, I was in a landscape where everything was new—every sight and sound and
smell.
The eight months I spent in that exotic land were the start of a romance that has never cooled. They
would make me a lifelong traveler to Africa and Asia and other remote cultures and would forever
change how I thought about the world. Remember: Your biggest stories will often have less to do with
their subject than with their significance—not what you did in a certain situation, but how that situation
affected you and shaped the person you became.
As for how to actually organize your memoir, my final advice is, again, think small. Tackle your life in
easily manageable chunks. Don’t visualize the finished product, the grand edifice you have vowed to
construct. That will only make you anxious.
Here’s what I suggest.
Go to your desk on Monday morning and write about some event that’s still vivid in your memory. What
you write doesn’t have to be long—three pages, five pages—but it should have a beginning and an end.
Put that episode in a folder and get on with your life. On Tuesday morning, do the same thing. Tuesday’s
episode doesn’t have to be related to Monday’s episode. Take whatever memory comes calling; your
subconscious mind, having been put to work, will start delivering your past.
Keep this up for two months, or three months, or six months. Don’t be impatient to start writing your
“memoir,” the one you had in mind before you began. Then, one day, take all your entries out of their
folder and spread them on the floor. (The floor is often a writer’s best friend.) Read them through and
see what they tell you and what patterns emerge. They will tell you what your memoir is about and
what it’s not about. They will tell you what’s primary and what’s secondary, what’s interesting and
what’s not, what’s emotional, what’s important, what’s funny, what’s unusual, what’s worth pursing and
expanding. You’ll begin to glimpse your story’s narrative shape and the road you want to take.
Then all you have to do is put the pieces together.
53
“Eleven”
by Sandra Cisneros
What they don’t understand about birthdays and what they never tell you is that when you’re
eleven, you’re also ten, and nine, and eight, and seven, and six, and five, and four, and three, and two,
and one. And when you wake up on your eleventh birthday you expect to feel eleven, but you don’t. You
open your eyes and everything’s just like yesterday, only it’s today. And you don’t feel eleven at all. You
feel like you’re still ten. And you are—underneath the year that makes you eleven.
Like some days you might say something stupid, and that’s the part of you that’s still ten. Or maybe
some days you might need to sit on your mama’s lap because you’re scared, and that’s the part of you
that’s five. And maybe one day when you’re all grown up maybe you will need to cry like if you’re three,
and that’s okay. That’s what I tell Mama when she’s sad and needs to cry. Maybe she’s feeling three.
Because the way you grow old is kind of like an onion or like the rings inside a tree trunk or like my
little wooden dolls that fit one inside the other, each year inside the next one. That’s how being eleven
years old is.
You don’t feel eleven. Not right away. It takes a few days, weeks even, sometimes even months
before you say Eleven when they ask you. And you don’t feel smart eleven, not until you’re almost
twelve. That’s the way it is.
Only today I wish I didn’t have only eleven years rattling inside me like pennies in a tin Band-Aid box.
Today I wish I was one hundred and two instead of eleven because if I was one hundred and two I’d
have known what to say when Mrs. Price put the red sweater on my desk. I would’ve known how to tell
her it wasn’t mine instead of just sitting there with that look on my face and nothing coming out of my
mouth.
“Whose is this?” Mrs. Price says, and she holds the red sweater up in the air for all the class to see.
“Whose? It’s been sitting in the coatroom for a month.”
“Not mine,” says everybody. “Not me.”
“It has to belong to somebody,” Mrs. Price keeps saying, but nobody can remember. It’s an ugly
sweater with red plastic buttons and a collar and sleeves all stretched out like you could use it for a
jump rope. It’s maybe a thousand years old and even if it belonged to me I wouldn’t say so.
Maybe because I’m skinny, maybe because she doesn’t like me, that stupid Sylvia Saldivar says, “I
think it belongs to Rachel.” An ugly sweater like that, all raggedy and old, but Mrs. Price believes her.
Mrs. Price takes the sweater and puts it right on my desk, but when I open my mouth nothing comes
out.
“That’s not, I don’t, you’re not . . . Not mine,” I finally say in a little voice that was maybe me when I
was four.
“Of course it’s yours,” Mrs. Price says, “I remember you wearing it once.” Because she’s older and
the teacher, she’s right and I’m not.
Not mine, not mine, not mine, but Mrs. Price is already turning to page thirty-two, and math problem
number four. I don’t know why but all of a sudden I’m feeling sick inside, like the part of me that’s three
wants to come out of my eyes, only I squeeze them shut tight and bite down on my teeth real hard and
try to remember today I am eleven, eleven. Mama is making a cake for me for tonight, and when Papa
comes home everybody will sing Happy birthday, happy birthday to you.
But when the sick feeling goes away and I open my eyes, the red sweater’s still sitting there like a big
red mountain. I move the red sweater to the corner of my desk with my ruler. I move my pencil and
books and eraser as far from it as possible. I even move my chair a little to the right. Not mine, not mine,
not mine.
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In my head I’m thinking how long till lunchtime, how long till I can take the red sweater and throw it
over the schoolyard fence, or leave it hanging on a parking meter, or bunch it up into a little ball and
toss it in the alley. Except when math period ends Mrs. Price says loud and in front of everybody, “Now,
Rachel, that’s enough,” because she sees I’ve shoved the red sweater to the tippy-tip corner of my desk
and it’s hanging all over the edge like a waterfall, but I don’t care.
“Rachel,” Mrs. Price says. She says it like she’s getting mad. “You put that sweater on right now and
no more nonsense.”
“But it’s not—“
“Now!” Mrs. Price says.
This is when I wish I wasn’t eleven, because all the years inside of me—ten, nine, eight, seven, six,
five, four, three, two, and one—are pushing at the back of my eyes when I put one arm through one
sleeve of the sweater that smells like cottage cheese, and then the other arm through the other and
stand there with my arms apart like if the sweater hurts me and it does, all itchy and full of germs that
aren’t mine.
That’s when everything I’ve been holding in since this morning, since when Mrs. Price put the
sweater on my desk, finally lets go, and all of a sudden I’m crying in front of everybody. I wish I was
invisible but I’m not. I’m eleven and it’s my birthday today and I’m crying like I’m three in front of
everybody. I put my head down on the desk and bury my face in my stupid clown-sweater arms. My face
all hot and spit coming out of my mouth because I can’t stop the little animal noises from coming out of
me, until there aren’t any more tears left in my eyes, and it’s just my body shaking like when you have
the hiccups, and my whole head hurts like when you drink milk too fast.
But the worst part is right before the bell rings for lunch. That stupid Phyllis Lopez, who is even
dumber than Sylvia Saldivar, says she remembers the red sweater is hers! I take it off right away and
give it to her, only Mrs. Price pretends like everything’s okay.
Today I’m eleven. There’s a cake Mama’s making for tonight, and when Papa comes home from
work we’ll eat it. There’ll be candles and presents and everybody will sing Happy birthday, happy
birthday to you, Rachel, only it’s too late.
I’m eleven today. I’m eleven, ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, and one, but I wish I
was one hundred and two. I wish I was anything but eleven, because I want today to be far away
already, far away like a runaway balloon, like a tiny o in the sky, so tiny-tiny you have to close your eyes
to see it.
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“Oranges”
by Gary Soto
The first time I walked
With a girl, I was twelve,
Cold, and weighted down
With two oranges in my jacket.
December. Frost cracking
Beneath my steps, my breath
Before me, then gone,
As I walked toward
Her house, the one whose
Porch light burned yellow
Night and day, in any weather.
A dog barked at me, until
She came out pulling
At her gloves, face bright
With rouge. I smiled,
Touched her shoulder, and led
Her down the street, across
A used car lot and a line
Of newly planted trees,
Until we were breathing
Before a drugstore. We
Entered, the tiny bell
Bringing a saleslady
Down a narrow aisle of goods.
I turned to the candies
Tiered like bleachers,
And asked what she wanted Light in her eyes, a smile
Starting at the corners
Of her mouth. I fingered
A nickle in my pocket,
And when she lifted a chocolate
That cost a dime,
I didn't say anything.
I took the nickle from
My pocket, then an orange,
And set them quietly on
The counter. When I looked up,
The lady's eyes met mine,
And held them, knowing
Very well what it was all
About.
Outside,
A few cars hissing past,
56
Fog hanging like old
Coats between the trees.
I took my girl's hand
In mine for two blocks,
Then released it to let
Her unwrap the chocolate.
I peeled my orange
That was so bright against
The gray of December
That, from some distance,
Someone might have thought
I was making a fire in my hands.
57
“Thank You, Ma’am”
by Langston Hughes
She was a large woman with a large purse that had everything in it but hammer and nails. It had a long
strap, and she carried it slung across her shoulder. It was about eleven o’clock at night, and she was
walking alone, when a boy ran up behind her and tried to snatch her purse. The strap broke with the
single tug the boy gave it from behind. But the boy’s weight and the weight of the purse combined
caused him to lose his balance so, instead of taking off full blast as he had hoped, the boy fell on his back
on the sidewalk, and his legs flew up. the large woman simply turned around and kicked him right
square in his blue-jeaned sitter. Then she reached down, picked the boy up by his shirt front, and shook
him until his teeth rattled.
After that the woman said, “Pick up my pocketbook, boy, and give it here.” She still held him. But she
bent down enough to permit him to stoop and pick up her purse. Then she said, “Now ain’t you
ashamed of yourself?”
Firmly gripped by his shirt front, the boy said, “Yes’m.”
The woman said, “What did you want to do it for?”
The boy said, “I didn’t aim to.”
She said, “You a lie!”
By that time two or three people passed, stopped, turned to look, and some stood watching.
“If I turn you loose, will you run?” asked the woman.
“Yes’m,” said the boy.
“Then I won’t turn you loose,” said the woman. She did not release him.
“I’m very sorry, lady, I’m sorry,” whispered the boy.
“Um-hum! And your face is dirty. I got a great mind to wash your face for you. Ain’t you got nobody
home to tell you to wash your face?”
“No’m,” said the boy.
“Then it will get washed this evening,” said the large woman starting up the street, dragging the
frightened boy behind her.
He looked as if he were fourteen or fifteen, frail and willow-wild, in tennis shoes and blue jeans.
The woman said, “You ought to be my son. I would teach you right from wrong. Least I can do right now
is to wash your face. Are you hungry?”
“No’m,” said the being dragged boy. “I just want you to turn me loose.”
“Was I bothering you when I turned that corner?” asked the woman.
“No’m.”
“But you put yourself in contact with me,” said the woman. “If you think that that contact is not going to
last awhile, you got another thought coming. When I get through with you, sir, you are going to
remember Mrs. Luella Bates Washington Jones.”
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Sweat popped out on the boy’s face and he began to struggle. Mrs. Jones stopped, jerked him around in
front of her, put a half-nelson about his neck, and continued to drag him up the street.
When she got to her door, she dragged the boy inside, down a hall, and into a large kitchenette
furnished room at the rear of the house. She switched on the light and left the door open. The boy could
hear other roomers laughing and talking in the large house. Some of their doors were open, too, so he
knew he and the woman were not alone. The woman still had him by the neck in the middle of her
room.
She said, “What is your name?”
“Roger,” answered the boy.
“Then, Roger, you go to that sink and wash your face,” said the woman, whereupon she turned him
loose—at last. Roger looked at the door—looked at the woman—looked at the door—and went to the
sink.
Let the water run until it gets warm,” she said. “Here’s a clean towel.”
“You gonna take me to jail?” asked the boy, bending over the sink.
“Not with that face, I would not take you nowhere,” said the woman. “Here I am trying to get home to
cook me a bite to eat and you snatch my pocketbook! Maybe, you ain’t been to your supper either, late
as it be. Have you?”
“There’s nobody home at my house,” said the boy.
“Then we’ll eat,” said the woman, “I believe you’re hungry—or been hungry—to try to snatch my
pocketbook.”
“I wanted a pair of blue suede shoes,” said the boy.
“Well, you didn’t have to snatch my pocketbook to get some suede shoes,” said Mrs. Luella Bates
Washington Jones. “You could of asked me.”
“M’am?”
The water dripping from his face, the boy looked at her. There was a long pause. A very long pause.
After he had dried his face and not knowing what else to do dried it again, the boy turned around,
wondering what next. The door was open. He could make a dash for it down the hall. He could run, run,
run, run, run!
The woman was sitting on the day-bed. After a while she said, “I were young once and I wanted things I
could not get.”
There was another long pause. The boy’s mouth opened. Then he frowned, but not knowing he
frowned.
The woman said, “Um-hum! You thought I was going to say but, didn’t you? You thought I was going to
say, but I didn’t snatch people’s pocketbooks. Well, I wasn’t going to say that.” Pause. Silence. “I have
done things, too, which I would not tell you, son—neither tell God, if he didn’t already know. So you set
down while I fix us something to eat. You might run that comb through your hair so you will look
presentable.”
59
In another corner of the room behind a screen was a gas plate and an icebox. Mrs. Jones got up and
went behind the screen. The woman did not watch the boy to see if he was going to run now, nor did
she watch her purse which she left behind her on the day-bed. But the boy took care to sit on the far
side of the room where he thought she could easily see him out of the corner of her eye, if she wanted
to. He did not trust the woman not to trust him. And he did not want to be mistrusted now.
“Do you need somebody to go to the store,” asked the boy, “maybe to get some milk or something?”
“Don’t believe I do,” said the woman, “unless you just want sweet milk yourself. I was going to make
cocoa out of this canned milk I got here.”
“That will be fine,” said the boy.
She heated some lima beans and ham she had in the icebox, made the cocoa, and set the table.
The woman did not ask the boy anything about where he lived, or his folks, or anything else that would
embarrass him. Instead, as they ate, she told him about her job in a hotel beauty-shop that stayed open
late, what the work was like, and how all kinds of women came in and out, blondes, red-heads, and
Spanish. Then she cut him a half of her ten-cent cake.
“Eat some more, son,” she said.
When they were finished eating she got up and said, “Now, here, take this ten dollars and buy yourself
some blue suede shoes. And next time, do not make the mistake of latching onto my pocketbook nor
nobody else’s—because shoes come by devilish like that will burn your feet. I got to get my rest now.
But I wish you would behave yourself, son, from here on in.”
She led him down the hall to the front door and opened it. “Good-night! Behave yourself, boy!” she said,
looking out into the street.
The boy wanted to say something else other than “Thank you, m’am” to Mrs. Luella Bates Washington
Jones, but he couldn’t do so as he turned at the barren stoop and looked back at the large woman in the
door. He barely managed to say “Thank you” before she shut the door. And he never saw her again.
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“Short memoirs: Six little words can be revealing”
by Doug Mason
We know a good idea when we steal one.
So does SMITH Magazine, which built the personal storytelling project "Six-Word Memoirs" on the
bones of the literary legend that Ernest Hemingway once answered a challenge to write a six-word story
with: "For sale: baby shoes, never worn."
A whole sub-genre of fiction was inspired by that haunting six-word narrative. Flash Fiction is a relatively
recent term for the short short story, but the form's masters include Aesop, Saki and O. Henry. Add a
numbers gimmick and you have word-count fiction, which includes the Drabble (a story exactly 100
words in length), 55 Fiction (a literary work of 55 words or less that contains setting, conflict, resolution
and at least one character) and 69ers (works of exactly 69 words).
SMITH Magazine, an online storytelling magazine, made the short-form writing exercise personal when
in 2006 it launched "Six-Word Memoirs."
The open invitation to sum up one's life experiences in six words was answered by professionals and
amateurs. Some of the contributions, which continue at www.smithmag.net, have been confessional
and deeply personal; others, shallow and hilarious.
Among the nearly 1,000 memoirists included in the 2007 best-selling book compilation "Not Quite What
I Was Planning: Six-Word Memoirs by Writers Famous & Obscure" are:
Celebrated authors: "Revenge is living well, without you" - Joyce Carol Oates. "Fifteen years since last
professional haircut" - Dave Eggers.
Celebrity chefs: "Brought it to a boil, often" - Mario Batali.
Comedians: "Liars, hysterectomy didn't improve sex life!" - Joan Rivers. "Well, I thought it was funny" Stephen Colbert.
Comic-book curmudgeons: "Fight, work, persevere - gain slight notoriety" - Harvey Pekar.
Cult musicians: "Couldn't cope so I wrote songs" - Aimee Mann.
And, Confessional non-celebrities - "Cursed with cancer. Blessed with friends" - Hannah Davies, 9-yearold cancer survivor. "I still make coffee for two" - Zak Nelson, who was dumped not widowed.
We love the everybody-can-play spirit of "Six Word Memoirs." Below are mini-biographies from
interesting local folks, and a few with a local connection, - some are stars, some aren't.
"Iowa youth. Savannah colored my world."- Mike Berry, artist (2007 Dogwood Arts Festival Limited
Edition Print)
"Thoughtful visionary with soles on ground."- Larry Frank, Knox County Library Director
"Life … One day at a time!"- Pat Summitt, Tennessee Lady Vols Head Coach
"Play loud, fly high, get rich."- Dave Dammit bass player for The American Plague (voted Best Band, 2007
East Tennessee's Best)
"Read a book. Wrote my own."- Terry Brooks, best-selling fantasy author (submitted during his Sept. 8
visit to Carpe Librum Booksellers on Kingston Pike)
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"I looked before I leapt. Wow!"- Mary Butler, Carpe Librum bookseller who has just earned her master's
degree in library sciences from UT
"Faith, Family, Friendship and Tennessee Football."- Philip Fulmer, UT Vols Head Coach
"Rebellious by nature; sometimes plays nice"- Chyna Brackeen, marketing/promotions director for AC
Entertainment
"Commit your talents to serving HIM."- Shamicka Benn, actress (the 2005 UT theater department
graduate plays Go-To-Hell-Kitty in the musical "Chicago," which opens the Broadway at the Tennessee
series, Oct. 7-9)
"Life and family are a privilege." - Brian Salesky, Knoxville Opera general director/conductor (who
bought a house this summer and is finally reunited full-time with his wife and son, who stayed behind in
Connecticut when he joined the KCO in 2005)
"Eat, drink, sleep, talk, dream film." - Bradley Reeves, co-founder Tennessee Archive of Moving Image
and Sound
"Remember who you are and represent." - Joan Cronan, UT Women's Athletics director
"Don't tell me it's nothing personal." - Lee Papa, former Knoxville resident whose popular political blog
The Rude Pundit last week celebrated its fifth anniversary.
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“Seventh Grade”
by Gary Soto
On the first day of school, Victor stood in line half an hour before he came to a wobbly card table. He
was handed a packet of papers and a computer card on which he listed his one elective, French. He
already spoke Spanish and English, but he thought some day he might travel to France, where it was
cool; not like Fresno, where summer days reached 110 degrees in the shade. There were rivers in
Prance, and huge churches, and fair-skinned people everywhere, the way there were brown people all
around Victor .
Besides, Teresa, a girl he had liked since they were in catechism classes at Saint Theresa’s, was taking
French, too. With any luck they would be in the same class. Teresa is going to be my girl this year, he
promised himself as he left the gym full of students in their new fall clothes. She was cute. And good in
math, too, Victor thought as he walked down the hall to his homeroom. He ran into his friend, Michael
Torres, by the water fountain that never turned off.
They shook hands, raza-style, and jerked their heads at one another in a saludo de vato. “How come
you’re making a face?” asked Victor.
“I ain’t making a face, ese. This is my face.” Michael said his face had changed during the summer. He
had read a GQ magazine that his older brother had borrowed from the Book Mobile and noticed that
the male models all had the same look on their faces. They would stand, one arm around a beautiful
woman, and scowl. They would sit at the pool, their rippled stomachs dark with shadow, and scowl.
They would sit at dinner tables, cool drinks in their hands, and scowl,
“I think it works,” Michael said. He scowled and let his upper lip quiver. His teeth showed along with the
ferocity of his soul. “Belinda Reyes walked by a while ago and looked at me,” he said.
Victor didn’t say anything, though he thought his friend looked pretty strange. They talked about recent
movies, baseball, their parents, and the horrors of picking grapes in order to buy their fall clothes.
Picking grapes was like living in Siberia, except hot and more boring.
“What classes are you taking?” Michael said, scowling. “French. How ‘bout you?” “Spanish. L ain’t so
good at it, even if I’m Mexican." “I’m not either, but I’m better at it than math, that’s for sure.”
A tiny, three-beat bell propelled students to their homerooms. The two friends socked each other in the
arm and went their ways, Victor thinking, man, that’s weird. Michael thinks making a face makes him
handsome.
On the way to his homeroom, Victor tried a scowl. He felt foolish, until out of the corner of his eye he
saw a girl looking at hint Umm, he thought, maybe it does work. He scowled with greater conviction.
Victor lingered, keeping his head down and staring at his desk. He wanted to leave when she did so he
could bump into her and say something clever.
He watched her on the sly. As she turned to leave, he stood up and hurried to the door, where he
managed to catch her eye. She smiled and said, “Hi, Victor."
He smiled back and said, “Yeah, that's me.” His brown face blushed. Why hadn’t he said, “Hi, Teresa,” or
"How was your summer?” or something nice.
As Teresa walked down the hall, Victor walked the other way, looking back, admiring how gracefully she
walked, one foot in front of the other. So much for being in the same class, he thought. As he trudged to
English, he practiced scowling.
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In English they reviewed the parts of speech. Mr. Lucas, a portly man, waddled down the aisle, asking,
“What is a noun?”
“A person, place, or thing,” said the class in unison.
Yes, now somebody give mean example of a person--you, Victor Rodriguez.”
"Teresa,” Victor said automatically. Some of the girls giggled. They knew he had a crush on Teresa. He
felt himself blushing again.
“Correct,” Mr. Lucas said. “Now provide me with a place.”
Mr. Lucas called on a freckled kid who answered, “Teresa’s house with a kitchen full of big brothers.”
After English, Victor had math, his weakest subject. He sat in the back by the window, hoping that he
would not be called on. Victor understood most of the problems, but some of the stuff looked like the
teacher made it up as she went along. It was confusing, like the inside of a watch.
After math he had a fifteen-minute break, then social studies, and finally lunch. He bought a tuna
casserole with buttered rolls, some fruit cocktail, and milk. He sat with Michael, who practiced scowling
between bites,
Girls walked by and looked at him, “See what I mean, Vic?” Michael scowled. "They love it.”
Yeah, I guess so.
They ate slowly, Victor scanning the horizon for a glimpse of Teresa. He didn’t see her. She must have
brought lunch, he thought, and is eating outside. Victor scraped his plate and left Michael, who was busy
scowling at a girl two tables away.
The small, triangle-shaped campus bustled with students talking about their new classes. Everyone was
in a sunny mood. Victor hurried to the bag lunch area, where he sat down and opened his math book.
He moved his lips as if he were reading, but his mind was somewhere else. He raised his eyes slowly and
looked around. No Teresa.
He lowered his eyes, pretending to study, then looked slowly to the left. No Teresa. He turned a page in
the book and stared at some math problems that scared him because he knew he would have to do
them eventually. He looked at the right. Still no sign of her. He stretched out lazily in an attempt to
disguise his snooping.
Then he saw her. She was sitting with a girlfriend under a plum tree. Victor moved to a table near her
and daydreamed about taking her to a movie. When the bell sounded, Teresa looked up, and their eyes
met. She smiled sweetly and gathered her books. Her next class was French, same as Victor’s.
They were among the last students to arrive in class, so all the good desks in the back had already been
taken. Victor was forced to sit near the front, a few desks away from Teresa, while Mr. Bueller wrote
French words on the chalkboard. The bell rang, and Mr. Bueller wiped his hands, turned to the class, and
said, “Bonjour.”
“Bonjour,” braved a few students.
“Bonjour” Victor whispered. He wondered if Teresa heard him.
Mr. Bueller said that if the students studied hard, at the end of the year they could go to France and be
understood by the populace.
One kid raised his hand and asked, “‘What’s ‘populace’?”
"The people, the people of France.”
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Mr. Bueller asked if anyone knew French. Victor raised his hand, wanting to impress Teresa. The teacher
beamed and said, “Tres bien. Parlez-vous francais?”
Victor didn’t know what to say. The teacher wet his lips and asked something else in French. The room
grew silent. Victor felt all eyes staring at him. He tried to bluff his way out by making noises that
sounded French.
“La me vave me con le grandma,” he said uncertainly.
Mr. Bueller, wrinkling his face in curiosity, asked him to speak up. Great rosebushes of red bloomed on
Victor’s cheeks. A river of nervous sweat ran down his palms. He felt awful. Teresa sat a few desks away,
no doubt thinking he was a fool. Without looking at Mr. Bueller, Victor mumbled, ‘Frenchie oh wewe
gee in September.”
Mr. Bueller asked Victor to repeat what he said.
“Frenchie oh wewe gee in September," Victor repeated.
Mr. Bueller understood that the boy didn’t know French and turned away. He walked to the blackboard
and pointed to the words on the board with his steel-edged ruler.
"Le bateau,” he sang.
“Le bateau,” the students repeated.
"Le bateau est sur l’eau,” he sang.
“Le bateau est sur l’eau.”
Victor was too weak from failure to join the class. He stared at the board and wished he had taken
Spanish, not French. Better yet, he wished he could start his life over. He had never been so
embarrassed. He bit his thumb until he tore off a sliver of skin.
The bell sounded for fifth period, and Victor shot out of the room, avoiding the stares of the other kids,
but had to return for his math book. He looked sheepishly at the teacher, who was erasing the board,
then widened his eyes in terror at Teresa who stood in front of him. “I didn’t know you knew
French,”she said. “That was good.”
Mr. Bueller looked at Victor, and Victor looked back. Oh please, don’t say anything, Victor pleaded with
his eyes. I’ll wash your car, mow your lawn, walk your dog--anything! I'll be your best student, and I’ll
clean your erasers after school.
Mr. Bueller shuffled through the papers on his desk, He smiled and hummed as he sat down to work. He
remembered his college years when he dated a girlfri0end in borrowed cars. She thought he was rich
because each time he picked her up he had a different car. It was fun until he had spent all his money on
her and had to write home to his parents because he was broke.
Victor couldn’t stand to look at Teresa. He was sweaty with shame. “Yeah, well, I picked up a few things
from movies and books and stuff like that.” They left the class together. Teresa asked him if he would
help her with her French.
"Sure, anytime,” Victor said.
“I won’t be bothering you, will I?”
"Oh no, I like being bothered.”
“Bonjour,”Teresa said, leaving him outside her next class. She smiled and pushed wisps of hair from her
face.
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"Yeah, right, bonjour,” Victor said. He turned and headed to his class. The rosebuds of shame on his face
became bouquets of love. Teresa is a great girl, he thought. And Mr. Bueller is a good guy.
He raced to metal shop. After metal shop there was biology, and after biology a long sprint to the public
library, where he checked out three French textbooks.
He was going to like seventh grade.
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The People Could Fly
by Virginia Hamilton
They say the people could fly. Say that long ago in Africa, some of the people knew magic. And
they would walk up on the air like climbin’ up on a gate. And they flew like blackbirds over the fields.
Black, shiny wings flappin’ against the blue up there.
Then, many of the people were captured for Slavery. The ones that could fly shed their wings.
They couldn’t take their wings across the water on slave ships. Too crowded, don’t you know.
The folks were full of misery, then. Got sick with the up and down of the sea. So they forgot
about flyin’ when they could no longer breathe the sweet scent of Africa.
Say the people who could fly kept their power, although they shed their wings. They looked the
same as the other people from Africa who had been coming over, who had dark skin. Say you couldn’t
tell anymore one who could fly from one who couldn’t.
One such who could was an old man, call him Toby. And standin’ tall, yet afraid, was a young
woman who once had wings. Call her Sarah. Now Sarah carried a babe tied to her back. She trembled to
be so hard worked and scorned.
The slaves labored in the fields from sunup to sundown. The owner of the slaves callin’ himself
their Master. Say he was a hard lump of clay. A hard, glinty coal. A hard rock pile, wouldn’t be moved.
His Overseer on horseback pointed out the slaves who were slowin’ down. So the one called Driver
cracked his whip over the slow ones to make them move faster. That whip was a slice-open cut of pain.
So they did move faster. Had to.
Sarah hoed and chopped the row as the babe on her back slept.
Say the child grew hungry. That babe started up bawling too loud. Sarah couldn’t stop to feed it.
Couldn’t stop to soothe and quiet it down. She let it cry. She didn’t want to. She had no heart to croon
to it.
“Keep that thing quiet,” called the Overseer. He pointed his finger at the babe. The woman
scrunched low. The Driver cracked his ship across the babe anyhow. The babe hollered like any hurt
child, and the woman fell to the earth.
The old man that was there, Toby, came and helped her to her feet.
“I must go soon,” she told him.
“Soon,” he said.
Sarah couldn’t stand up straight any longer. She was too weak. The sun burned her face. The
babe cried and cried, “Pity me, oh, pity me,” say it sounded like. Sarah was so sad and starvin’, she sat
down in the row.
“Get up, you black cow,” called the Overseer. He pointed his hand, and the Driver’s whip snarled
around Sarah’s legs. Her sack dress tore into rags. Her legs bled onto the earth. She couldn’t get up.
Toby was there where there was no one to help her and the babe.
“Now before it’s too late,” panted Sarah.“Now, Father!”
“Yes, Daughter, the time is come,” Toby answered. Go, as you know how to go!”
He raised his arms, holding them out to her.
“Kum...yali, kum buba tambe,” and more magic words, said so quickly, they sounded like
whispers and sighs.
The young woman lifted one foot on the air. Then the other. She flew clumsily at first, with the
child now held tightly in her arms. The she felt the magic, the African mystery. Say she rose just as free
as a bird. As light as a feather.
The Overseer rode after her, hollerin’. Sarah flew over the fences. She flew over the woods.
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Tall trees could not snag her. Nor could the Overseer. She flew like an eagle now, until she was gone
from sight. No one dared speak about it. Couldn’t believe it. But it was, because they that was there saw
that it was.
Another and another fell from the heat. Toby was there. He cried out to the fallen and reached
his arms out to them. “Kum kunka yali, kum...tambe!” Whispers and sighs. And they too rose on the air.
They rode the hot breezes. The ones flyin’ were black and shinin’ sticks, wheelin’ above the head of the
Overseer. They crossed the rows, the fields, the fences, the streams, and were away.
“Seize the old man!” cried the Overseer. “I heard him say the magic words. Seize him!”
The one callin’ himself Master come runnin’. The Driver got his ship ready to curl around old
Toby and tie him up. The slave owner took his hip gun from its place. He meant to kill old black Toby.
But Toby just laughed Say he threw back his head and said, “Hee, hee! Don’t you know who I
am? Don’t you know some of us in this field?” He said it to their faces. “We are ones who fly!” And he
sighed the ancient words that were a dark promise. He said them all around to the other in the field
under the whip,...buba yali...buba tambe...”
There was a great outcryin’. The bent backs straighten up. Old and young who were called slaves
and could fly joined hands. Say like they would ring-sing. But they didn’t shuffle in a circle. They didn’t
sing. They rose on the air. They flew in a flock that was black against the heavenly blue. Black crows or
black shadows. It didn’t matter, they went so high. Way above the plantation, way over the slavery land.
Say they flew away to Free-dom.
And the old man, old Toby, flew behind them, takin’ care of them. He wasn’t cryin’. He wasn’t
laughin’. He was the seer. His faze fell on the plantation where the slave who could not fly waited.
“Take us with you!” Their looks spoke it, but they were afraid to shout it. Toby couldn’t take
them with him. Hadn’t the time to teach them to fly. They must wait for a chance to run. “Goodie-bye!”
the old man called Toby spoke to them, poor souls! And he was flyin’ gone. So they say. The Overseer
told it. The one called Master said it was a lie, a trick of the light. The Driver kept his mouth shut.
The slaves who could not fly told about the people who could fly to their children. When they
were free. When they sat close before the fire in the free land, they told it. They did so love firelight and
Free-dom, and tellin’.
They say that the children of the ones who could not fly told their children. And now, me, I have
told it to you.
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“O Captain! My Captain!”
by Walt Whitman
O CAPTAIN! my Captain! our fearful trip is done;
The ship has weather'd every rack, the prize we sought is won;
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring:
But O heart! heart! heart!
O the bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.
O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
Rise up--for you the flag is flung--for you the bugle trills; 10
For you bouquets and ribbon'd wreaths--for you the shores a-crowding;
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;
Here Captain! dear father!
This arm beneath your head;
It is some dream that on the deck,
You've fallen cold and dead.
My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still;
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will;
The ship is anchor'd safe and sound, its voyage closed and done;
From fearful trip, the victor ship, comes in with object won; 20
Exult, O shores, and ring, O bells!
But I, with mournful tread,
Walk the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.
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A Narrative on the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave
by Frederick Douglass
I now come to that part of my life during which I planned, and finally succeeded in making, my escape
from slavery. But before narrating any of the peculiar circumstances, I deem it proper to make known
my intention not to state all the facts connected with the transaction. My reasons for pursuing this
course may be understood from the following: First, were I to give a minute statement of all the facts, it
is not only possible, but quite probable, that others would thereby be involved in the most embarrassing
difficulties. Secondly, such a statement would most undoubtedly induce greater vigilance on the part of
slaveholders than has existed heretofore among them; which would, of course, be the means of
guarding a door whereby some dear brother bondman might escape his galling chains. I deeply regret
the necessity that impels me to suppress any thing of importance connected with my experience in
slavery. It would afford me great pleasure indeed, as well as materially add to the interest of my
narrative, were I at liberty to gratify a curiosity, which I know exists in the minds of many, by an accurate
statement of all the facts pertaining to my most fortunate escape. But I must deprive myself of this
pleasure, and the curious of the gratification which such a statement would afford. I would allow myself
to suffer under the greatest imputations which evil-minded men might suggest, rather than exculpate
myself, and thereby run the hazard of closing the slightest avenue by which a brother slave might clear
himself of the chains and fetters of slavery.
I have never approved of the very public manner in which some of our western friends have conducted
what they call the underground railroad, but which I think, by their open declarations, has been made
most emphatically the upper-ground railroad. I honor those good men and women for their noble
daring, and applaud them for willingly subjecting themselves to bloody persecution, by openly avowing
their participation in the escape of slaves. I, however, can see very little good resulting from such a
course, either to themselves or the slaves escaping; while, upon the other hand, I see and feel assured
that those open declarations are a positive evil to the slaves remaining, who are seeking to escape. They
do nothing towards enlightening the slave, whilst they do much towards enlightening the master. They
stimulate him to greater watchfulness, and enhance his power to capture his slave. We owe something
to the slave south of the line as well as to those north of it; and in aiding the latter on their way to
freedom, we should be careful to do nothing which would be likely to hinder the former from escaping
from slavery. I would keep the merciless slaveholder profoundly ignorant of the means of flight adopted
by the slave. I would leave him to imagine himself surrounded by myriads of invisible tormentors, ever
ready to snatch from his infernal grasp his trembling prey. Let him be left to feel his way in the dark; let
darkness commensurate with his crime hover over him; and let him feel that at every step he takes, in
pursuit of the flying bondman, he is running the frightful risk of having his hot brains dashed out by an
invisible agency. Let us render the tyrant no aid; let us not hold the light by which he can trace the
footprints of our flying brother. But enough of this. I will now proceed to the statement of those facts,
connected with my escape, for which I am alone responsible, and for which no one can be made to
suffer but myself.
In the early part of the year 1838, I became quite restless. I could see no reason why I should, at the end
of each week, pour the reward of my toil into the purse of my master. When I carried to him my weekly
wages, he would, after counting the money, look me in the face with a robber-like fierceness, and ask,
"Is this all?" He was satisfied with nothing less than the last cent. He would, however, when I made him
six dollars, sometimes give me six cents, to encourage me. It had the opposite effect. I regarded it as a
sort of admission of my right to the whole. The fact that he gave me any part of my wages was proof, to
my mind, that he believed me entitled to the whole of them. I always felt worse for having received any
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thing; for I feared that the giving me a few cents would ease his conscience, and make him feel himself
to be a pretty honorable sort of robber. My discontent grew upon me. I was ever on the look-out for
means of escape; and, finding no direct means, I determined to try to hire my time, with a view of
getting money with which to make my escape. In the spring of 1838, when Master Thomas came to
Baltimore to purchase his spring goods, I got an opportunity, and applied to him to allow me to hire my
time. He unhesitatingly refused my request, and told me this was another stratagem by which to escape.
He told me I could go nowhere but that he could get me; and that, in the event of my running away, he
should spare no pains in his efforts to catch me. He exhorted me to content myself, and be obedient. He
told me, if I would be happy, I must lay out no plans for the future. He said, if I behaved myself properly,
he would take care of me. Indeed, he advised me to complete thoughtlessness of the future, and taught
me to depend solely upon him for happiness. He seemed to see fully the pressing necessity of setting
aside my intellectual nature, in order to contentment in slavery. But in spite of him, and even in spite of
myself, I continued to think, and to think about the injustice of my enslavement, and the means of
escape.
About two months after this, I applied to Master Hugh for the privilege of hiring my time. He was not
acquainted with the fact that I had applied to Master Thomas, and had been refused. He too, at first,
seemed disposed to refuse; but, after some reflection, he granted me the privilege, and proposed the
following terms: I was to be allowed all my time, make all contracts with those for whom I worked, and
find my own employment; and, in return for this liberty, I was to pay him three dollars at the end of
each week; find myself in calking tools, and in board and clothing. My board was two dollars and a half
per week. This, with the wear and tear of clothing and calking tools, made my regular expenses about six
dollars per week. This amount I was compelled to make up, or relinquish the privilege of hiring my time.
Rain or shine, work or no work, at the end of each week the money must be forthcoming, or I must give
up my privilege. This arrangement, it will be perceived, was decidedly in my master's favor. It relieved
him of all need of looking after me. His money was sure. He received all the benefits of slaveholding
without its evils; while I endured all the evils of a slave, and suffered all the care and anxiety of a
freeman. I found it a hard bargain. But, hard as it was, I thought it better than the old mode of getting
along. It was a step towards freedom to be allowed to bear the responsibilities of a freeman, and I was
determined to hold on upon it. I bent myself to the work of making money. I was ready to work at night
as well as day, and by the most untiring perseverance and industry, I made enough to meet my
expenses, and lay up a little money every week. I went on thus from May till August. Master Hugh then
refused to allow me to hire my time longer. The ground for his refusal was a failure on my part, one
Saturday night, to pay him for my week's time. This failure was occasioned by my attending a camp
meeting about ten miles from Baltimore. During the week, I had entered into an engagement with a
number of young friends to start from Baltimore to the camp ground early Saturday evening; and being
detained by my employer, I was unable to get down to Master Hugh's without disappointing the
company. I knew that Master Hugh was in no special need of the money that night. I therefore decided
to go to camp meeting, and upon my return pay him the three dollars. I staid at the camp meeting one
day longer than I intended when I left. But as soon as I returned, I called upon him to pay him what he
considered his due. I found him very angry; he could scarce restrain his wrath. He said he had a great
mind to give me a severe whipping. He wished to know how I dared go out of the city without asking his
permission. I told him I hired my time and while I paid him the price which he asked for it, I did not know
that I was bound to ask him when and where I should go. This reply troubled him; and, after reflecting a
few moments, he turned to me, and said I should hire my time no longer; that the next thing he should
know of, I would be running away. Upon the same plea, he told me to bring my tools and clothing home
forthwith. I did so; but instead of seeking work, as I had been accustomed to do previously to hiring my
time, I spent the whole week without the performance of a single stroke of work. I did this in retaliation.
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Saturday night, he called upon me as usual for my week's wages. I told him I had no wages; I had done
no work that week. Here we were upon the point of coming to blows. He raved, and swore his
determination to get hold of me. I did not allow myself a single word; but was resolved, if he laid the
weight of his hand upon me, it should be blow for blow. He did not strike me, but told me that he would
find me in constant employment in future. I thought the matter over during the next day, Sunday, and
finally resolved upon the third day of September, as the day upon which I would make a second attempt
to secure my freedom. I now had three weeks during which to prepare for my journey. Early on Monday
morning, before Master Hugh had time to make any engagement for me, I went out and got
employment of Mr. Butler, at his ship-yard near the drawbridge, upon what is called the City Block, thus
making it unnecessary for him to seek employment for me. At the end of the week, I brought him
between eight and nine dollars. He seemed very well pleased, and asked why I did not do the same the
week before. He little knew what my plans were. My object in working steadily was to remove any
suspicion he might entertain of my intent to run away; and in this I succeeded admirably. I suppose he
thought I was never better satisfied with my condition than at the very time during which I was planning
my escape. The second week passed, and again I carried him my full wages; and so well pleased was he,
that he gave me twenty-five cents, (quite a large sum for a slaveholder to give a slave,) and bade me to
make a good use of it. I told him I would.
Things went on without very smoothly indeed, but within there was trouble. It is impossible for me to
describe my feelings as the time of my contemplated start drew near. I had a number of warmhearted
friends in Baltimore,—friends that I loved almost as I did my life,—and the thought of being separated
from them forever was painful beyond expression. It is my opinion that thousands would escape from
slavery, who now remain, but for the strong cords of affection that bind them to their friends. The
thought of leaving my friends was decidedly the most painful thought with which I had to contend. The
love of them was my tender point, and shook my decision more than all things else. Besides the pain of
separation, the dread and apprehension of a failure exceeded what I had experienced at my first
attempt. The appalling defeat I then sustained returned to torment me. I felt assured that, if I failed in
this attempt, my case would be a hopeless one—it would seal my fate as a slave forever. I could not
hope to get off with any thing less than the severest punishment, and being placed beyond the means of
escape. It required no very vivid imagination to depict the most frightful scenes through which I should
have to pass, in case I failed. The wretchedness of slavery, and the blessedness of freedom, were
perpetually before me. It was life and death with me. But I remained firm, and, according to my
resolution, on the third day of September, 1838, I left my chains, and succeeded in reaching New York
without the slightest interruption of any kind. How I did so,—what means I adopted,—what direction I
travelled, and by what mode of conveyance,—I must leave unexplained, for the reasons before
mentioned.
I have been frequently asked how I felt when I found myself in a free State. I have never been able to
answer the question with any satisfaction to myself. It was a moment of the highest excitement I ever
experienced. I suppose I felt as one may imagine the unarmed mariner to feel when he is rescued by a
friendly man-of-war from the pursuit of a pirate. In writing to a dear friend, immediately after my arrival
at New York, I said I felt like one who had escaped a den of hungry lions. This state of mind, however,
very soon subsided; and I was again seized with a feeling of great insecurity and loneliness. I was yet
liable to be taken back, and subjected to all the tortures of slavery. This in itself was enough to damp the
ardor of my enthusiasm. But the loneliness overcame me. There I was in the midst of thousands, and yet
a perfect stranger; without home and without friends, in the midst of thousands of my own brethren—
children of a common Father, and yet I dared not to unfold to any one of them my sad condition. I was
afraid to speak to any one for fear of speaking to the wrong one, and thereby falling into the hands of
money-loving kidnappers, whose business it was to lie in wait for the panting fugitive, as the ferocious
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beasts of the forest lie in wait for their prey. The motto which I adopted when I started from slavery was
this—"Trust no man!" I saw in every white man an enemy, and in almost every colored man cause for
distrust. It was a most painful situation; and, to understand it, one must needs experience it, or imagine
himself in similar circumstances. Let him be a fugitive slave in a strange land—a land given up to be the
hunting-ground for slaveholders—whose inhabitants are legalized kidnappers—where he is every
moment subjected to the terrible liability of being seized upon by his fellowmen, as the hideous
crocodile seizes upon his prey!—I say, let him place himself in my situation—without home or friends—
without money or credit—wanting shelter, and no one to give it—wanting bread, and no money to buy
it,—and at the same time let him feel that he is pursued by merciless men-hunters, and in total darkness
as to what to do, where to go, or where to stay,—perfectly helpless both as to the means of defence and
means of escape,—in the midst of plenty, yet suffering the terrible gnawings of hunger,—in the midst of
houses, yet having no home,—among fellow-men, yet feeling as if in the midst of wild beasts, whose
greediness to swallow up the trembling and half-famished fugitive is only equalled by that with which
the monsters of the deep swallow up the helpless fish upon which they subsist,—I say, let him be placed
in this most trying situation,—the situation in which I was placed,—then, and not till then, will he fully
appreciate the hardships of, and know how to sympathize with, the toil-worn and whip-scarred fugitive
slave.
Thank Heaven, I remained but a short time in this distressed situation. I was relieved from it by the
humane hand of Mr. DAVID RUGGLES, whose vigilance, kindness, and perseverance, I shall never forget.
I am glad of an opportunity to express, as far as words can, the love and gratitude I bear him. Mr.
Ruggles is now afflicted with blindness, and is himself in need of the same kind offices which he was
once so forward in the performance of toward others. I had been in New York but a few days, when Mr.
Ruggles sought me out, and very kindly took me to his boarding-house at the corner of Church and
Lespenard Streets. Mr. Ruggles was then very deeply engaged in the memorable Darg case, as well as
attending to a number of other fugitive slaves, devising ways and means for their successful escape;
and, though watched and hemmed in on almost every side, he seemed to be more than a match for his
enemies.
Very soon after I went to Mr. Ruggles, he wished to know of me where I wanted to go; as he deemed it
unsafe for me to remain in New York. I told him I was a calker, and should like to go where I could get
work. I thought of going to Canada; but he decided against it, and in favor of my going to New Bedford,
thinking I should be able to get work there at my trade. At this time, Anna,* my intended wife, came on;
for I wrote to her immediately after my arrival at New York, (notwithstanding my homeless, houseless,
and helpless condition,) informing her of my successful flight, and wishing her to come on forthwith. In a
few days after her arrival, Mr. Ruggles called in the Rev. J. W. C. Pennington, who, in the presence of Mr.
Ruggles, Mrs. Michaels, and two or three others, performed the marriage ceremony, and gave us a
certificate, of which the following is an exact copy:—
"This may certify, that I joined together in holy matrimony Frederick Johnson** and Anna Murray, as
man and wife, in the presence of Mr. David Ruggles and Mrs. Michaels.
"JAMES W. C. PENNINGTON
"NEW YORK, SEPT. 15, 1838"
*She was free.
**I had changed my name from Frederick BAILEY to that of JOHNSON.
Upon receiving this certificate, and a five-dollar bill from Mr. Ruggles, I shouldered one part of our
baggage, and Anna took up the other, and we set out forthwith to take passage on board of the
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steamboat John W. Richmond for Newport, on our way to New Bedford. Mr. Ruggles gave me a letter to
a Mr. Shaw in Newport, and told me, in case my money did not serve me to New Bedford, to stop in
Newport and obtain further assistance; but upon our arrival at Newport, we were so anxious to get to a
place of safety, that, notwithstanding we lacked the necessary money to pay our fare, we decided to
take seats in the stage, and promise to pay when we got to New Bedford. We were encouraged to do
this by two excellent gentlemen, residents of New Bedford, whose names I afterward ascertained to be
Joseph Ricketson and William C. Taber. They seemed at once to understand our circumstances, and gave
us such assurance of their friendliness as put us fully at ease in their presence.
It was good indeed to meet with such friends, at such a time. Upon reaching New Bedford, we were
directed to the house of Mr. Nathan Johnson, by whom we were kindly received, and hospitably
provided for. Both Mr. and Mrs. Johnson took a deep and lively interest in our welfare. They proved
themselves quite worthy of the name of abolitionists. When the stage-driver found us unable to pay our
fare, he held on upon our baggage as security for the debt. I had but to mention the fact to Mr. Johnson,
and he forthwith advanced the money.
We now began to feel a degree of safety, and to prepare ourselves for the duties and responsibilities of
a life of freedom. On the morning after our arrival at New Bedford, while at the breakfast-table, the
question arose as to what name I should be called by. The name given me by my mother was, "Frederick
Augustus Washington Bailey." I, however, had dispensed with the two middle names long before I left
Maryland so that I was generally known by the name of "Frederick Bailey." I started from Baltimore
bearing the name of "Stanley." When I got to New York, I again changed my name to "Frederick
Johnson," and thought that would be the last change. But when I got to New Bedford, I found it
necessary again to change my name. The reason of this necessity was, that there were so many
Johnsons in New Bedford, it was already quite difficult to distinguish between them. I gave Mr. Johnson
the privilege of choosing me a name, but told him he must not take from me the name of "Frederick." I
must hold on to that, to preserve a sense of my identity. Mr. Johnson had just been reading the "Lady of
the Lake," and at once suggested that my name be "Douglass." From that time until now I have been
called "Frederick Douglass;" and as I am more widely known by that name than by either of the others, I
shall continue to use it as my own.
I was quite disappointed at the general appearance of things in New Bedford. The impression which I
had received respecting the character and condition of the people of the north, I found to be singularly
erroneous. I had very strangely supposed, while in slavery, that few of the comforts, and scarcely any of
the luxuries, of life were enjoyed at the north, compared with what were enjoyed by the slaveholders of
the south. I probably came to this conclusion from the fact that northern people owned no slaves. I
supposed that they were about upon a level with the non-slaveholding population of the south. I knew
they were exceedingly poor, and I had been accustomed to regard their poverty as the necessary
consequence of their being non-slaveholders. I had somehow imbibed the opinion that, in the absence
of slaves, there could be no wealth, and very little refinement. And upon coming to the north, I expected
to meet with a rough, hard-handed, and uncultivated population, living in the most Spartan-like
simplicity, knowing nothing of the ease, luxury, pomp, and grandeur of southern slaveholders. Such
being my conjectures, any one acquainted with the appearance of New Bedford may very readily infer
how palpably I must have seen my mistake.
In the afternoon of the day when I reached New Bedford, I visited the wharves, to take a view of the
shipping. Here I found myself surrounded with the strongest proofs of wealth. Lying at the wharves, and
riding in the stream, I saw many ships of the finest model, in the best order, and of the largest size.
Upon the right and left, I was walled in by granite warehouses of the widest dimensions, stowed to their
utmost capacity with the necessaries and comforts of life. Added to this, almost every body seemed to
74
be at work, but noiselessly so, compared with what I had been accustomed to in Baltimore. There were
no loud songs heard from those engaged in loading and unloading ships. I heard no deep oaths or horrid
curses on the laborer. I saw no whipping of men; but all seemed to go smoothly on. Every man appeared
to understand his work, and went at it with a sober, yet cheerful earnestness, which betokened the
deep interest which he felt in what he was doing, as well as a sense of his own dignity as a man. To me
this looked exceedingly strange. From the wharves I strolled around and over the town, gazing with
wonder and admiration at the splendid churches, beautiful dwellings, and finely-cultivated gardens;
evincing an amount of wealth, comfort, taste, and refinement, such as I had never seen in any part of
slaveholding Maryland.
Every thing looked clean, new, and beautiful. I saw few or no dilapidated houses, with poverty-stricken
inmates; no half-naked children and barefooted women, such as I had been accustomed to see in
Hillsborough, Easton, St. Michael's, and Baltimore. The people looked more able, stronger, healthier,
and happier, than those of Maryland. I was for once made glad by a view of extreme wealth, without
being saddened by seeing extreme poverty. But the most astonishing as well as the most interesting
thing to me was the condition of the colored people, a great many of whom, like myself, had escaped
thither as a refuge from the hunters of men. I found many, who had not been seven years out of their
chains, living in finer houses, and evidently enjoying more of the comforts of life, than the average of
slaveholders in Maryland. I will venture to assert, that my friend Mr. Nathan Johnson (of whom I can say
with a grateful heart, "I was hungry, and he gave me meat; I was thirsty, and he gave me drink; I was a
stranger, and he took me in") lived in a neater house; dined at a better table; took, paid for, and read,
more newspapers; better understood the moral, religious, and political character of the nation,—than
nine tenths of the slaveholders in Talbot county Maryland. Yet Mr. Johnson was a working man. His
hands were hardened by toil, and not his alone, but those also of Mrs. Johnson. I found the colored
people much more spirited than I had supposed they would be. I found among them a determination to
protect each other from the blood-thirsty kidnapper, at all hazards. Soon after my arrival, I was told of a
circumstance which illustrated their spirit. A colored man and a fugitive slave were on unfriendly terms.
The former was heard to threaten the latter with informing his master of his whereabouts. Straightway
a meeting was called among the colored people, under the stereotyped notice, "Business of
importance!" The betrayer was invited to attend. The people came at the appointed hour, and
organized the meeting by appointing a very religious old gentleman as president, who, I believe, made a
prayer, after which he addressed the meeting as follows: "Friends, we have got him here, and I would
recommend that you young men just take him outside the door, and kill him!" With this, a number of
them bolted at him; but they were intercepted by some more timid than themselves, and the betrayer
escaped their vengeance, and has not been seen in New Bedford since. I believe there have been no
more such threats, and should there be hereafter, I doubt not that death would be the consequence.
I found employment, the third day after my arrival, in stowing a sloop with a load of oil. It was new,
dirty, and hard work for me; but I went at it with a glad heart and a willing hand. I was now my own
master. It was a happy moment, the rapture of which can be understood only by those who have been
slaves. It was the first work, the reward of which was to be entirely my own. There was no Master Hugh
standing ready, the moment I earned the money, to rob me of it. I worked that day with a pleasure I had
never before experienced. I was at work for myself and newly-married wife. It was to me the startingpoint of a new existence. When I got through with that job, I went in pursuit of a job of calking; but such
was the strength of prejudice against color, among the white calkers, that they refused to work with me,
and of course I could get no employment.*
* I am told that colored persons can now get employment at calking in New Bedford—a result of antislavery effort.
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Finding my trade of no immediate benefit, I threw off my calking habiliments, and prepared myself to do
any kind of work I could get to do. Mr. Johnson kindly let me have his wood-horse and saw, and I very
soon found myself a plenty of work. There was no work too hard—none too dirty. I was ready to saw
wood, shovel coal, carry wood, sweep the chimney, or roll oil casks,—all of which I did for nearly three
years in New Bedford, before I became known to the anti-slavery world.
In about four months after I went to New Bedford, there came a young man to me, and inquired if I did
not wish to take the "Liberator." I told him I did; but, just having made my escape from slavery, I
remarked that I was unable to pay for it then. I, however, finally became a subscriber to it. The paper
came, and I read it from week to week with such feelings as it would be quite idle for me to attempt to
describe. The paper became my meat and my drink. My soul was set all on fire. Its sympathy for my
brethren in bonds—its scathing denunciations of slaveholders—its faithful exposures of slavery—and its
powerful attacks upon the upholders of the institution—sent a thrill of joy through my soul, such as I
had never felt before!
I had not long been a reader of the "Liberator," before I got a pretty correct idea of the principles,
measures and spirit of the anti-slavery reform. I took right hold of the cause. I could do but little; but
what I could, I did with a joyful heart, and never felt happier than when in an anti-slavery meeting. I
seldom had much to say at the meetings, because what I wanted to say was said so much better by
others. But, while attending an anti-slavery convention at Nantucket, on the 11th of August, 1841, I felt
strongly moved to speak, and was at the same time much urged to do so by Mr. William C. Coffin, a
gentleman who had heard me speak in the colored people's meeting at New Bedford. It was a severe
cross, and I took it up reluctantly. The truth was, I felt myself a slave, and the idea of speaking to white
people weighed me down. I spoke but a few moments, when I felt a degree of freedom, and said what I
desired with considerable ease. From that time until now, I have been engaged in pleading the cause of
my brethren—with what success, and with what devotion, I leave those acquainted with my labors to
decide.
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Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman
“Letter from Frederick Douglass to Harriet Tubman, 1868”
by Sarah Hopkins Bradford
Rochester, August 29, 1868
Dear Harriet: I am glad to know that the story of your eventful life has been written by a kind lady, and
that the same is soon to be published. You ask for what you do not need when you call upon me for a
word of commendation. I need such words from you far more than you can need them from me,
especially where your superior labors and devotion to the cause of the lately enslaved of our land are
known as I know them. The difference between us is very marked. Most that I have done and suffered in
the service of our cause has been in public, and I have received much encouragement at every step of
the way. You, on the other hand, have labored in a private way. I have wrought in the day – you in the
night. I have had the applause of the crowd and the satisfaction that comes of being approved by the
multitude, while the most that you have done has been witnessed by a few trembling, scarred, and footsore bondmen and women, whom you have led out of the house of bondage, and whose heartfelt, “God
bless you,” has been your only reward. The midnight sky and the silent stars have been the witnesses of
your devotion to freedom and of your heroism. Excepting John Brown – of sacred memory – I know of
no one who has willingly encountered more perils and hardships to serve our enslaved people than you
have. Much that you have done would seem improbable to those who do not know you as I know you. It
is to me a great pleasure and a great privilege to bear testimony for your character and your works, and
to say to those to whom you may come, that I regard you in every way truthful and trustworthy.
Your friend,
Frederick Douglass.
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“The Great Escape from Slavery of Ellen and William Craft”
Marian Smith Holmes (SmithsonianMag.com)
Ellen and William lived in Macon, Georgia, and were owned by different masters. Put up for auction at
age 16 to help settle his master’s debts, William had become the property of a local bank cashier. A
skilled cabinetmaker, William, continued to work at the shop where he had apprenticed, and his new
owner collected most of his wages. Minutes before being sold, William had witnessed the sale of his
frightened, tearful 14-year-old sister. His parents and brother had met the same fate and were scattered
throughout the South.
As a child, Ellen, the offspring of her first master and one of his biracial slaves, had frequently been
mistaken for a member of his white family. Much annoyed by the situation, the plantation mistress sent
11-year-old Ellen to Macon to her daughter as a wedding present in 1837, where she served as a ladies
maid. Ellen and William married, but having experienced such brutal family separations despaired over
having children, fearing they would be torn away from them. “The mere thought,” William later wrote of
his wife’s distress, “filled her soul with horror.”
Pondering various escape plans, William, knowing that slaveholders could take their slaves to any state,
slave or free, hit upon the idea of fair-complexioned Ellen passing herself off as his master—a wealthy
young white man because it was not customary for women to travel with male servants. Initially Ellen
panicked at the idea but was gradually won over. Because they were “favourite slaves,” the couple had
little trouble obtaining passes from their masters for a few days leave at Christmastime, giving them
some days to be missing without raising the alarm. Additionally, as a carpenter, William probably would
have kept some of his earnings – or perhaps did odd jobs for others – and was allowed to keep some of
the money.
Before setting out on December 21, 1848, William cut Ellen’s hair to neck length. She improved on the
deception by putting her right arm in a sling, which would prevent hotel clerks and others from
expecting “him” to sign a registry or other papers. Georgia law prohibited teaching slaves to read or
write, so neither Ellen nor William could do either. Refining the invalid disguise, Ellen asked William to
wrap bandages around much of her face, hiding her smooth skin and giving her a reason to limit
conversation with strangers. She wore a pair of men’s trousers that she herself had sewed. She then
donned a pair of green spectacles and a top hat. They knelt and prayed and took “a desperate leap for
liberty.”
At the Macon train station, Ellen purchased tickets to Savannah, 200 miles away. As William took a place
in the “negro car,” he spotted the owner of the cabinetmaking shop on the platform. After questioning
the ticket seller, the man began peering through the windows of the cars. William turned his face from
the window and shrank in his seat, expecting the worst. The man searched the car Ellen was in but never
gave the bandaged invalid a second glance. Just as he approached William’s car, the bell clanged and the
train lurched off.
Ellen, who had been staring out the window, then turned away and discovered that her seat mate was a
dear friend of her master, a recent dinner guest who had known Ellen for years. Her first thought was
that he had been sent to retrieve her, but the wave of fear soon passed when he greeted her with “It is
a very fine morning, sir.”
To avoid talking to him, Ellen feigned deafness for the next several hours.
In Savannah, the fugitives boarded a steamer for Charleston, South Carolina. Over breakfast the next
morning, the friendly captain marveled at the young master’s “very attentive boy” and warned him to
beware “cut-throat abolitionists” in the North who would encourage William to run away. A slave trader
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on board offered to buy William and take him to the Deep South, and a military officer scolded the
invalid for saying “thank you” to his slave. In an overnight stay at the best hotel in Charleston, the
solicitous staff treated the ailing traveler with upmost care, giving him a fine room and a good table in
the dining room.
Trying to buy steamer tickets from South Carolina to Philadelphia, Ellen and William hit a snag when the
ticket seller objected to signing the names of the young gentleman and his slave even after seeing the
injured arm. In an effort to prevent white abolitionists from taking slaves out of the South, slaveholders
had to prove that the slaves traveling with them were indeed their property. Sometimes travelers were
detained for days trying to prove ownership. As the surly ticket seller reiterated his refusal to sign by
jamming his hands in his pockets, providence prevailed: The genial captain happened by, vouched for
the planter and his slave and signed their names.
Baltimore, the last major stop before Pennsylvania, a free state, had a particularly vigilant border patrol.
Ellen and William were again detained, asked to leave the train and report to the authorities for
verification of ownership. “We shan’t let you go,” an officer said with finality. “We felt as though we had
come into deep waters and were about being overwhelmed,” William recounted in the book, and
returned “to the dark and horrible pit of misery.” Ellen and William silently prayed as the officer stood
his ground. Suddenly the jangling of the departure bell shattered the quiet. The officer, clearly agitated,
scratched his head. Surveying the sick traveler’s bandages, he said to a clerk, “he is not well, it is a pity to
stop him.” Tell the conductor to “let this gentleman and slave pass.”
The Crafts arrived in Philadelphia the next morning—Christmas Day. As they left the station, Ellen burst
into tears, crying out, “Thank God, William, we’re safe!”
The comfortable coaches and cabins notwithstanding, it had been an emotionally harrowing journey,
especially for Ellen as she kept up the multilayered deception. From making excuses for not partaking of
brandy and cigars with the other gentleman to worrying that slavers had kidnapped William, her nerves
were frayed to the point of exhaustion. At a Virginia railway station, a woman had even mistaken
William for her runaway slave and demanded that he come with her. As predicted, abolitionists
approached William. One advised him to “leave that cripple and have your liberty,” and a free black man
on the train to Philadelphia urged him to take refuge in a boarding house run by abolitionists. Through it
all Ellen and William maintained their roles, never revealing anything of themselves to the strangers
except a loyal slave and kind master.
Upon their arrival in Philadelphia, Ellen and William were quickly given assistance and lodging by the
underground abolitionist network. They received a reading lesson their very first day in the city. Three
weeks later, they moved to Boston where William resumed work as a cabinetmaker and Ellen became a
seamstress. After two years, in 1850, slave hunters arrived in Boston intent on returning them to
Georgia. The Crafts fled again, this time to England, where they eventually had five children. After 20
years they returned to the States and in the 1870s established a school in Georgia for newly freed
blacks.
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“Notable Visitors: Frederick Douglass”
Mr. Lincoln’s White House
Black abolitionist leader Frederick Douglass was an early critic of President Lincoln. Douglass became an
admirer of President Lincoln after the Emancipation Proclamation and helped the Union Army recruit
black troops. In August of 1863, Douglass went to President Lincoln to urge equal pay for black soldiers.
Nearly a year later on August 19, 1864, Douglass returned to the White House at the President's
request. Douglass was impressed that President Lincoln prolonged their conversation despite the arrival
of Connecticut Governor William A. Cunningham. Douglass recalled: "Mr. Lincoln said, 'tell Governor
Buckingham to wait, for I want to have a long talk with my friend Frederick Douglass.'" Douglass
commented: "This was probably the first time in the history of this Republic when its chief magistrate
found occasion or disposition to exercise such an act of impartiality between persons so widely different
in their positions and supposed claims upon his attention. From the manner of the governor, when he
was finally admitted, I inferred that he was as well satisfied with what Mr. Lincoln had done, or had
omitted to do, as I was."1 In his autobiography, Life and Times of Frederick Douglass, the abolitionist
author wrote:
The increasing opposition to the war, in the North, and the mad cry against it, because it was
being made an abolition war, alarmed Mr. Lincoln, and made him apprehensive that a peace
might be forced upon him which would leave still in slavery all who had not come within our
lines. What he wanted was to make his Proclamation as effective as possible in the event of such
a peace. He said in a regretful tone, 'The slaves are not coming so rapidly and so numerously to
us as I had hoped.' I replied that the slaveholders knew how to keep such things from their
slaves, and probably very few knew of his Proclamation. 'Well,' he said, 'I want you to set about
devising some means of making them acquainted with it, and for bringing them into our lines.
He spoke with great earnestness and much solicitude, and seemed troubled by the attitude of
Mr. Greeley, and the growing impatience there was being manifested through the North at the
war. He said he was being accused of protracting the war beyond its legitimate object, and of
failing to make peace, when he might have done so to advantage. He was afraid of what might
come of all these complaints, but was persuaded that no solid and lasting peace could come
short of absolute submission on the part of the rebels, and he was not for giving them rest by
futile conferences at Niagara Falls, or elsewhere, with unauthorized persons. He saw the danger
of premature peace, and, like a thoughtful and sagacious man as he was, he wished to provide
means of rendering such consummation as harmless as possible. I was the more impressed by
his benevolent consideration because he before said, in answer to the peace clamor, that his
object was to save the Union, and to do so with or without slavery. What he said on this day
showed a deeper moral conviction against slavery than I had even seen before in anything
spoken or written by him. I listened with the deepest interest and profoundest satisfaction, and,
at his suggestion, agreed to undertake the organizing of a band of scouts, composed of colored
men, whose business should be somewhat after the original plan of John Brown, to go into the
rebel states, beyond the lines of our armies, and carry the news of emancipation, and urge the
slaves to come within our boundaries.2
Presumably, it was at this meeting that Mr. Lincoln told the abolitionist leader: "Douglass, I hate slavery
as much as you do, and I want to see it abolished altogether."3 A few days later, Douglass wrote the
President: "all with whom I have thus far spoken on the subject, concur in the wisdom and benevolence
of the idea, and some of them think it is practicable. That every slave who escapes from the Rebel States
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is a loss to the Rebellion and a gain to the Loyal Cause I need not stop to argue[;] the proposition is self
evident. The negro is the stomach of the rebellion."4
"Reaching the Capitol, I took my place in the crowd where I could se the presidential procession as it
came upon the east portico, and where I could hear and see all that took place," Douglass later wrote.
"The whole proceeding was wonderfully quiet, earnest, and solemn. From the oath, as administered by
Chief Justice Chase, to the brief but weighty address delivered by Mr. Lincoln, there was a leaden
stillness about the crowd. The address sounded more like a sermon than a state paper." Douglass
described events later that day when he tried to attend the Inaugural levee at the Executive Mansion:
For the first time in my life, and I suppose the first time in any colored man's life, I attended the
reception of President Lincoln on the evening of the inauguration. As I approached the door, I
was seized by two policemen and forbidden to enter. I said to them that they were mistaken
entirely in what they were doing, that if Mr. Lincoln knew that I was at the door he would order
my admission, and I bolted in by them. On the inside, I was taken charge of by two other
policemen, to be conducted as I supposed to the President, but instead of that they were
conducting me out the window on a plank.
'Oh,' said I, 'this will not do, gentlemen,' and as a gentleman was passing in I said to him, 'Just
say to Mr. Lincoln that Fred. Douglass is at the door.'
He rushed in to President Lincoln, and almost in less than half a minute I was invited into the
East Room of the White House. A perfect sea of beauty and elegance, too, it was. The ladies
were in very fine attire, and Mrs. Lincoln was standing there. I could not have been more than
ten feet from him when Mr. Lincoln saw me; his countenance lighted up, and he said in a voice
which was heard all around; 'Here comes my friend Douglass.' As I approached him he reached
out his hand, gave me a cordial shake, and said: 'Douglass, I saw you in the crowd today listening
to my inaugural address. There is no man's opinion that I value more than yours; what do you
think of it?' I said: 'Mr. Lincoln, I cannot stop here to talk with you, as there are thousands
waiting to shake you by the hand'; but he said again: 'What did you think of it?' I said: 'Mr.
Lincoln, it was a sacred effort,' and then I walked off. 'I am glad you liked it,' he said. That was
the last time I saw him to speak with him.5
Elizabeth Keckley described Mrs. Lincoln's reaction to his visit to the levee following President Lincoln's
Second Inauguration:
Many colored people in Washington, and large numbers had desired to attend the levee, but
orders were issued not to admit them. A gentleman, a member of Congress, on his way to the
White House, recognized Mr. Frederick Douglas, the eloquent colored orator, on the outskirts of
the crowd.
'How do you do, Mr. Douglas? A fearful jam to-night. You are going in, of course?'
'No -- that is, no to your last question.'
'Not going in to shake the President by the hand! Why, pray?'
'The best reason in the world. Strict orders have been issued not to admit people of color.'
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'It is a shame, Mr. Douglas, that you should thus be placed under ban. Never mind; wait here,
and I will see what can be done.'
The gentleman entered the White House, and working his way by the President, asked
permission to introduce Mr. Douglas to him.
'Certainly,' said Mr. Lincoln. 'Bring Mr. Douglas in, by all means. I shall be glad to meet him.'
The gentleman returned, and soon Mr. Douglas stood face to face with the President. Mr.
Lincoln pressed his hand warmly, saying: 'Mr. Douglas, I am glad to meet you. I have long
admired your course, and I value your opinions highly.'
Mr. Douglas was very proud of the manner in which Mr. Lincoln received him. On leaving the
White House he came to a friend's house where a reception was being held, and he related the
incident with great pleasure to myself and others.
On the Monday following the reception at the White House, everybody was busy preparing for
the grand ball to come off that night. I was in Mrs. Lincoln's room the greater portion of the day.
While dressing her that night, the President came in, and I remarked to him how much Mr.
Douglas had been pleased on the night he was presented to Mr. Lincoln. Mrs. L. at once turned
to her husband with the inquiry, 'Father, why was not Mr. Douglas introduced to me?'
'I do not know. I thought he was presented.'
'But he was not.'
'It must have been an oversight then, mother; I am sorry you did not meet him.'
I finished dressing her for the ball, and accompanied her to the door. She was dressed
magnificently, and entered the ballroom leaning on the arm of Senator Sumner, a gentleman
that she very much admired. Mr. Lincoln walked into the ballroom accompanied by two
gentlemen. This ball closed the season. It was the last time that the President and his wife ever
appeared in public.'6
Douglass escaped from slavery in 1838 after a harsh life of servitude in Maryland. He was later hired by
William Lloyd Garrison as a speaker for the Anti-Slavery Society. He founded and edited the North Star,
an abolitionist newspaper. After Lincoln's assassination, he became an ally of Radical Republicans and a
friend of Mary Todd Lincoln who gave him one of President Lincoln's canes. "It was often said during the
war that Mrs. Lincoln did not sympathize fully with her husband in his anti-slavery feeling, but I never
believed this concerning her, and have good reason for being confirmed in my impression of her by the
fact, that when Mr. Lincoln died and she was about leaving the White House, she selected his favorite
walking cane and said: 'I know of no one that would appreciate this more than Fred. Douglass.' She sent
it to me at Rochester, and I have it in my house to-day, and expect to keep it there as long as I live,"
Douglass later wrote.7
President Ulysses S. Grant appointed Frederick Douglass Marshal of District of Columbia and Minister to
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Haiti, the two highest appointed positions in the federal government to which a black American was
appointed in the 19th Century.
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“A fitting friendship between dressmaker and Mary Todd Lincoln”
by Jeanne Kolker
Years ago, while researching a historical fiction novel, Jennifer Chiaverini became captivated by the story
of Elizabeth Keckley, the real-life former slave who achieved the coveted role of dressmaker to first lady
Mary Todd Lincoln.
“I had come across a photo of a quilt that was very elaborate and embroidered, full of patriotic symbols,
very typical of the Civil War era,” said Chiaverini, who lives in Madison and is the prolific author of the
Elm Creek Quilts books.
That particular quilt was said to have been made by Elizabeth Keckley from fabrics left over from making
Mrs. Lincoln’s gowns.
“I thought of all of the conversations that would have gone on in the White House, all of the events that
Elizabeth would have witnessed while making dresses for Mrs. Lincoln,” Chiaverini said, expressing a
wish to know more details about the day-to-day life lived in the nation’s most powerful house.
Later, when she was researching another book, “The Union Quilters,” she kept running across research
that cited a memoir written by a former slave who had worked as Lincoln’s dressmaker. The memoir,
titled “Behind the Scenes or, Thirty Years as a Slave, and Four Years in the White House,” was published
in 1868 and is still available in print.
“When I saw her name, I remembered the quilt I had seen years before,” she said. “To have wished that
I could know what had gone on in the White House, and then to find out that she had put that in a
memoir, I was so thrilled. I immediately got my hands on the book and devoured it.”
All of that research yielded Chiaverini’s latest novel, “Mrs. Lincoln’s Dressmaker” (Dutton, $26.95),
which will be released on Tuesday.
The relationship between the first lady and her personal dressmaker makes rich fodder for historical
fiction. Who was this woman who saved all of the precious fabric scraps of her employer’s dresses and
stitched them into an opulent quilt? It seems that she was the first lady’s only friend at times.
“Mary Lincoln was this outsider from the frontier of Illinois,” Chiaverini said. “There was an established,
very tightly knit social hierarchy in Washington, D.C., at the time. To them, the Lincolns were these
bumbling countryfolk coming in and invading.”
While Mrs. Lincoln indeed possessed a sharp intellect, she still needed to be fashionable, to put herself
out into society in the best possible way. To do that, she needed the best dressmaker, someone to give
her social credibility, “that extra edge,” Chiaverini said.
For Elizabeth Keckley, the position of personal dressmaker to the most important woman in Washington
was very significant to her reputation. At first, the two women needed each other.
As the Lincolns’ time in the White House wore on, Lincoln and Keckley became closer as they shared
confidences. Keckley became so much more to the family than someone who simply made beautiful
dresses for the mother of the household.
“She would help nurse the family through illnesses, she would help care for the children, she would take
on all these other roles,” Chiaverini said. “She was someone that Mary Lincoln could absolutely rely
upon.”
Beyond that, Keckley could put up with Lincoln better than most.
“Because of her erratic personality, Mary tended to drive other people away,” Chiaverini said.
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“Elizabeth had a natural self-possession. She also spent most of her lifetime in slavery and had learned
to get along with difficult people,” she said. Keckley could tolerate Lincoln when her friends and family
just couldn’t deal with her anymore.
There were times, Chiaverini said, that Lincoln expressed that “sometimes she felt utterly alone, except
for Elizabeth.”
In “Mrs. Lincoln’s Dressmaker,” Chiaverini imagines the friendship from the perspective of Keckley,
taking the women’s relationship from the moment the Lincolns arrive in the White House through the
president’s assassination and aftermath.
The timing of the book release is serendipitous, as the 16th president is experiencing a resurgence in
popularity with the release of the acclaimed biopic “Lincoln.” Chiaverini speculated that the recent
interest in Lincoln isn’t all that unusual.
“He is never far from the forefront of the American imagination,” she said. “He is, for most Americans, a
revered figure.”
The issues he faced in the 1860s are still problems for Americans today.
“As far as we have come, we still have not achieved true racial equality in our country. The varying
opinions on how much power the president should have and the role of government are questions that
came up during the election,” she said. When we think about the crises that we face as a nation today,
we can take hope and inspiration from the Lincoln White House.
“He saw the nation through so much, and we endured,” she said. “Surely we can find a way to resolve
the problems and crises that we are facing today.”
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