Central High School - Mirror Yearbook (Birmingham, AL)

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through the trees, and hearing the crackling and snapping, they almost fiercely seized their children in their wild dash for safety. As the motley crowd watched from the bluff of the river and saw the last of the cabins go up in smoke and flame they well knew that 'Old Marster' would have new quarters within a fortnight. That is one of the slaves' privileges. With this thought they trooped as gay as ever up to the main quarters. Only Jonntee's mother thought to gather up the inert mass which had saved the lives of all of them. She bundled the limp form into her arms and brought it to me. Helpless to move or speak he remained a paralytic the few years left of his short life. The negroes whom he had tumbled out of bed at such an hour swore that he had started the fire by some of his witchery, and several of the wenches took the trouble to tell him so. 1 think his helplessness to deny the falsehood killed him—martyr that he was. 'Sins of the father, ’you know. The terrible run brought the final stroke on. I am sure, for it was threatening him all the time. But. Xerxes, his run was an unsung marathon. Two of us. Jonntee’s mother and I, never believed anything else but that some barbecue fire started that blaze. But be that as it may, 1 have never grown any rice since, nor do I intend to. Still 1 have to endure that trader’s boast every season. ETHELRED LUNDY SYKES, 'll. PEACH BLOSSOMS To see peach blossoms on the slopes in Spring. You think how sad it is so fair a thing So soon should fade. But as I see them lying blighted, dead. They are souls of brief, sweet minutes fled. The truant, wayward thoughts of things unsaid. Each blossom a soul, a light, a fragile thing. Of swift awakening thoughts that come in Spring. SUSAN MABRY. ’24. Page High teen

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 In those quarters a tiny mulatoo was born to a wench we took from the last boat. You could scarcely have called her a woman. Strange creature that she was. she spoke the purest French. She brought the boy up. and some of the negroes heard her label him 'si gentil' and he has been called Jonntee ever since. It was that Jonntee who died last spring? I asked. Yes. that same yellow Jonntee. Xerxes, who had the withered legs. They were not withered at birth, but later. That is my story. ‘ I he sins of the father,' however, were visited upon him—paralysis. He would sometmes fall helpless in the nvdst of a sermon; and because of that he lived alone in a shack at the opposite end of the field from all the other darkies. When the boy I sent to teach the children in the little settlement reported to me that Jonntee was the brightest mulatto he had ever seen. I told him not to let the boy work in the field, but to teach him to preach. I’ve always believed it was the little negro’s white blood that made h'm smart. So little Jonntee lived on in his solitary shack, preaching and singing 'of nights and Sundays. He was soon Aunt Zenda's righthand man with little Hannibal; and all the darkies would come to see him, hoping to see him throw one of his 'conniption fits’—as they called them. They thought he was a witch (not a wizard), and for that reason the slaves shunned him. On just this kind of night, with the marsh-breath whispering tales about the witchery of the new moon filtering through the trees. Jonntee would sit in his little hut, alone. His fondness for reading kept his weird eyes constantly peering between book covers. He had devoured all of mine, and I must confess, Xerxes, that some of them I hadn’t had patience to wade through myself. He had even translated some of my English works into French: polite French which his mother had taught him. Yes. said I. as he digressed, but you talked a moment ago as if something were about to happen. Something did happen. Xerxes, something terrible happened. A tiny blaze, starting down that field of Carolina rice stalks kindled to an angry roar; and the parched stalks fed the raging flames until the lives of the slaves sleeping at the other end were endangered. But Jonntee heard it coming. Jumping up from his lamp he saw the lurid glare, saw the sparks leap high. He heard naught but the growl and snapping that he knew would soon be upon him. He started to run. stumbling, falling, crying out. Over the hard baked rice trenches he fairly flew, screaming a warning shrilly—now in French, now in English. The dry. sere lances of the stalks cut his bare chest; and worse than that the stubble slashed his feet. Still, with the spirit that brands men heroes, he ran on. with the fiery breath of the dragon on his back. There were no lights, for it was late, and had it not been full moon he should have run squarely into the first outpost of the quarters. Almost out of breath he awakened the dogs, and with them at his heels, he ran from cabin to cabin, crying to the sleeping slaves to save themselves. The negroes needed no second invitation. Seeing the ruddy light ' £ • Seventeen

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THE AESTREA LITERARY SOCIETY