"Yes, Missie, glycerine and rose-water, Missie!"
He had taken some from her dressing-table to shine up his face in honor
of me! A shiny complexion is considered to be a great beauty among the
negroes! The dear old man! He was very bent and very old; and looked
like one of the logs that he used to bring in for the fire--a log from
some hoary, lichened tree whose life was long since past. He would
produce a pin from his head when you wanted one; he had them stuck in
his pad of white wooly hair: "Always handy then, Missie," he would say.
"Ask them to sing 'Sweet Violets,' Uncle Tom."
He was acting as a sort of master of the ceremonies at the entertainment
the servants were giving me.
"Don't think they know dat, Miss Olly."
"Why, I heard them singing it the other night!" And she hummed the tune.
"Oh, dat was 'Sweet Vio-_letts_,' Miss Olly!"
Washington was the first city I had seen in America where the people did
not hurry, and where the social life did not seem entirely the work of
women. The men asserted themselves here as something more than machines
in the background untiringly turning out the dollars, while their wives
and daughters give luncheons and teas at which only women are present.
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