Nesbitt Memorial Library Journal, Volume 9, Number 3, September 1999 Page: 153
[68] p. : ill. ; 28 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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The Writings of Fannie Amelia Dickson Darden
far away, foreign land. The stars and stripes did
not wave there, but a strange insignia, an iso-
lated star twinkled in feeble light above it. When
I was folded for the last time to the tender heart
of my gentle grand-mother, when Betsy and
Rhody had screamed their last goodbye, when
we were driven to the landing on the Alabama
river, and the boat puffing out her long column of
smoke bore us away, inexorably away from my
grand-father, so loved, so honored, who stood to
gaze after us upon the bluff, his silver hair tossed
by the wintry wind, I became an alien. Years
intervened ere I returned to the beautiful home
of my childhood. When we left New Orleans
where we had waited for two weeks for. a ves-
sel to sail, we embarked on the brig Eldorado,
which was towed to the Balize by a tug, and left
to float at her own good pleasure on the tossing
deep. One brig contained a small, close cabin
with curtained berths, a dining table in the center
of it, which our gallant and burly captain hospita-
bly presided, waited on by a shock-headed cabin
boy, whose bristling locks were an index to the
combative spirit which animated his small phy-
sique. An immense bandbox swinging like a pen-
dulum from the top of the cabin, varying its mo-
notonous motion with an occasional jerk and
lunge. Never can that bandbox be erased from
my memory. It has long since, I know, resolved
itself into its original elements, but it is indelibly
photographed on my mental vision. I was blessed
with a minute's view of its contents, as the gentle-
man who was taking it to his sister, took it out
carefully, to show it to the lady passengers. It
was an immense, blue silk bonnet with wide flar-
ing brim, and high crown, trimmed with a profu-
sion of ribbons, white lace, and pink roses. To
me it seemed to be the very perfection of color,
and artistic structure. When we were on the gulf,
it was only the memory of that bonnet which
made the sickening swinging of that bandbox
endurable, this coupled with the knowledge that
at some future time it would delight the heart of
that sister who was to be its happy possessor.As our brig floated down the Mississippi,
towed by the steaming and panting, black tug,
we passed far-stretching plantations, elegant vil-
las and orange groves, and once we stopped to
take in a supply of the golden fruit. As I stood
leaning against the bulwarks I was approached
by a fellow passenger, a little girl about my own
age, who told me that she inhabited the hold of
the vessel. I opened my eyes in wonder at her
account of that delightful quarterage, where she
told me her mother did her own cooking, but it
seemed awfully black and dismal, looking down
through the square hole into its cavern of
Plutonian darkness. We afterwards entered into
an animated discussion of the respective merits
of tea and coffee, and the great advantage of
sugar and milk therein, and agreed on this one
point, that the more sugar it contained the more
palatable the beverage. She introduced me to
her three brothers, Shadrac, Meshec, and
Abednigo. I had heard of these wonderful char-
acters before, and recognized in them immedi-
ately the veritable personages of the fiery fur-
nace, as related in Scripture. I was delighted to
see them, and studied them with attention.
Shadrac, the oldest of the three, had yellow tawny
locks, Meshec's were white, while Abednigo's
hair was flaming red. This last set me to medi-
tating, and as I was unable to elucidate the mat-
ter to myself I asked the possessor of the fiery
locks: "Bedingo, did your hair get scorched when
you went through the fiery furnace?" Instead of
giving me the information for which I was seek-
ing, he looked mortally offended and walked off
to the hold. When evening came on we entered
the Balize and as I leaned over to look at the
waves, for the tide was now in, the wind took
off my silken hood and placed it on the head of a
crested billow, which bore it away with pride to
the waiting ocean. When night drifted upon us,
our ship was ploughing the briny waves, a fiery
pathway streamed far behind us, the land had
vanished, and we were launched on the heaving
gulf We were ten days at sea after leaving the153
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Nesbitt Memorial Library. Nesbitt Memorial Library Journal, Volume 9, Number 3, September 1999, periodical, September 1999; Columbus, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth151407/m1/25/?q=nesbitt%20memorial%20library%20journal: accessed April 28, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Nesbitt Memorial Library.