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In Retrospect In looking over the yellowing pages and faded writing of my old diary written in the troubled years from 1861 to 1865, how the old life comes back, the gay, busy life of the plantation at Brokenburn with Mamma, a beautiful, brilliant woman of thirty-seven at the head of it all. Having been left a widow six years before with eight children and a heavily involved estate, she had managed so well that she was now the owner of a handsome property on which the crop of 1861 would pay off the last indebtedness. What a large houseful we were! Brother Will, a young man of twenty, had left school two years before, tired of college life and anxious to take charge of the place then just bought. I, fifteen months younger, had graduated at Dr. Elliott's Academy in Nashville and was of course the much indulged young lady of the house. The other children were being fitted for college at home under the care of a tutor to whom they were much devoted. Mr. Newton had been with us for two years, and we imagined would be with us until the last of the five boys was ready for school. Brother Coley and Ashburn Ragan, Mamma's young brother who lived with us—boys about the same age—expected to enter the University of Virginia in the fall and were studying hard to be able to enter the junior class. Living with us also, was Mamma's older brother, Bo[hanan] Ragan, the happiest, most carefree young man in three states—gay, rollicking, fond of pleasure, generous to a fault, without a care in the world. On the death of his mother a few years before when the old homestead had been sold, he had come to live with us, putting all his property in Mamma 's hands and not allowing any settlement at the closeof the year, only asking that his bills be paid. Fortunately, the price of his Negroes brought in plenty for his spending and the giving of many handsome gifts. Never a girl had a more generous, loving uncle than he had been to me. Last of all 3 4 BROKENBURN was Little Sister, a child of nine, the pet and plaything of the house. And coming and going all the time were the friends and relatives, for the people of those times were a sociable folk and the ties of kindness were closely drawn. There were usually girls visiting me and young men visiting my brothers; and as we lived in a populousneighborhood, for the swamp, there was always something going on—formal dining, informal "spend the days," evening parties, riding frolics—and in the grey of the morning great squads of hunters starting out with their packs of hounds baying, blowing of horns, and stamping and racing of horses. Brokenburn was a newly opened place when Mamma bought it. There were some cabins but no residence, but a sawmill had soon been built in connection with the gin, lumber sawed, and cabins and house went up in rapid order. The house, a long, eight-room affair with long galleries and two halls, was expected to be only a temporary shelter until the place should be well cleared and in good working order; then would be built in the large grove of native water oak, sweet gum, and sycamore, a house that would be a pride and pleasure to us all. Looking out from the side gallery across the wide grassy yard through the trees and wild vines that had been spared when the place was cleared for building, one could see the two long rows of cabins facing each other across a broad sweep of thick Bermuda grass, set with an occasional great tree, grey in the winter with long festoons of moss. Leading from each door was a little, crooked white path, ending at the road down the middle of the grass plot, beaten smooth by the march of the many black feet that journeyed over it in the early dawn, the weary, hot noonday, and the welcome dusk. Loth to go out in the sunrise for the weary hours of plowing, hoeing, clearing land, and long days of cotton picking in the lovely fall weather, the Negroes really seemed to like the cotton picking best of all. Nearly every picker would be racing with some other rival or friend, and at the great windup there were generally...

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