ColorLine Divides

YOU'RE the only one most precious,

In this weary, toilsome strife;
When you gather summer flowers,
Gather one into my life,

Let my soul attune and sing it,

You are sweeter than a rose;

But the color line divides us

How sad my heart, nobody knows, nobody knows!

OH! pray tell me, little treasure,
Is there sure no sweet relief?
Is the way closed, can it open,
Are we barred by our belief?
Must I depart-leave you alone-
Or this matter right dispose?

For a color line divides us

How sad my heart, nobody knows, nobody knows!

YOU are a bright little colored girl,
One who my soul can adore.
If I would say good-bye to you,
I ne'er would see you any more;
Would you be glad, I wonder,
My little yellow rose?

For a color line divides us

How sad my heart, nobody knows, nobody knows!

THE COLORED WOMAN ON THE

PLANTATION

AND HOW SHE IS RAISED BY PROGRESS MADE

BY SOPHIA COX JOHNSON

(Contributed for this book.)

We are in the Black Belt where it is said that for every white person you meet there are four colored. On every hand the one-roomed cabin appears utterly filled with children who peep at you from behind half-open doors and shutter

windows, while father is plowing and mother and the older ones are "howin in de fiel."

Some eighteen years ago the idea of gathering the mothers of children taught in the mission school together and forming, what is known as the Mothers' Meeting, was advanced by a worker who had been sent as a missionary. We are told by those competent to judge that a stream can rise no higher than its source-hence, to have intelligent, honest children the parents must be reached in some manner.

After considerable visiting and agitation, during which time some had gotten over their fear of "meetin dem teachers," the organization was formed. Lessons were assigned them in reading and writing and plans were outlined for discussing subjects dear to every woman's heart. Can we understand enough of their condition to sympathize with these mothers; who had come from homes where nothing was known save "plowin and howin cotton, corn, 'taters, sugarcane and penders," often until Saturday moon, then knocking off to do the family washing? No time to cook a decent meal even if it were known how.

These mothers from the time they were large enough to hoe in their father's crop had the ambition only to be the lead-hand in the field. And when married they had taken their turn at the

plow and scattering fertilizer and hoeing, often carrying the baby to the field and covering it under a shade tree while the work went on until the bell rang for noon. When all had gotten out, she must gather and cook her greens or fried meat and bread ere the bell rang for return to work.

Their social life, if such it might be called, consisted during the leisure season of tramping from house to house eating peanuts and sugar cane, roasting potatoes and gossiping, with merry quiltings at which time young and old frolicked together for more than half the night.

As for the men, after the strenuous days of plowing and planting were over, they were constantly hunting, squirrels by day and raccoons and opossums by night. Even in their churches religion consisted of learning the latest mourn, a kind of wierd sound echoing and re-echoing through the windowless shack, and trying to see who could shout the loudest and hold out the longest.

Some women there were, too, who came from homes where the father of the children was not the husband, and the mother was known as the cook of that particular man, while some mothers who as real wives, looked askance at their neighbors, because their husbands were as often at one house as at another.