Her first recollection of herself was that she could not walk—­she was past crawling; she cradled herself along, as she called sitting down flat, and working herself about with her hands and her one strong leg.  Babbling babies walked all around her,—­many walking before they babbled,—­and still she did not walk, imitate them as she might and did.  She would sit and “study” about it, make another trial, fall; sit and study some more, make another trial, fall again.  Negroes, who believe that they must give a reason for everything even if they have to invent one, were convinced that it was all this studying upon her lameness that gave her such a large head.

And now she began secretly turning up the clothes of every negro child that came into that pen, and examining its legs, and still more secretly examining her own, stretched out before her on the ground.  How long it took she does not remember; in fact, she could not have known, for she had no way of measuring time except by her thoughts and feelings.  But in her own way and time the due process of deliberation was fulfilled, and the quotient made clear that, bowed or not, all children’s legs were of equal length except her own, and all were alike, not one full, strong, hard, the other soft, flabby, wrinkled, growing out of a knot at the hip.  A whole psychological period apparently lay between that conclusion and—­a broom-handle walking-stick; but the broomstick came, as it was bound to come,—­thank heaven!—­from that premise, and what with stretching one limb to make it longer, and doubling up the other to make it shorter, she invented that form of locomotion which is still carrying her through life, and with no more exaggerated leg-crookedness than many careless negroes born with straight limbs display.  This must have been when she was about eight or nine.  Hobbling on a broomstick, with, no doubt, the same weird, wizened face as now, an innate sense of the fitness of things must have suggested the kerchief tied around her big head, and the burlaps rag of an apron in front of her linsey-woolsey rag of a gown, and the bit of broken pipe-stem in the corner of her mouth, where the pipe should have been, and where it was in after years.  That is the way she recollected herself, and that is the way one recalls her now, with a few modifications.

The others came and went, but she was always there.  It wasn’t long before she became “little Mammy” to the grown folks too; and the newest inmates soon learned to cry:  “Where’s little Mammy?” “Oh, little Mammy! little Mammy!  Such a misery in my head [or my back, or my stomach]!  Can’t you help me, little Mammy?” It was curious what a quick eye she had for symptoms and ailments, and what a quick ear for suffering, and how apt she was at picking up, remembering, and inventing remedies.  It never occurred to her not to crouch at the head or the foot of a sick pallet, day and night through.  As for the nights, she said she dared not close her eyes of nights.  The