CHAPTER PAGE

I. Diddie, Dumps, And Tot 13

II.  Christmas On The Old Plantation 29

III.  Mammy’s Story 44

IV.  Old Billy 50

V. Diddie’s Book 67

VI.  Uncle Snake-bit Bob’s Sunday-school 82

VII.  Poor Ann 92

VIII.  Uncle Bob’s Proposition 106

IX.  Aunt Edy’s Story 111

X. Plantation Games 119

XI.  Diddie In Trouble 128

XII.  How The Woodpecker’s Head And The Robin’s Breast
     Came To Be Red 140

XIII.  A Plantation Meeting, And Uncle Daniel’s Sermon 152

XIV.  Diddie And Dumps Go Visiting 166

XV.  The Fourth Of July 182

XVI. “’Struck’n uv de Chil’en” 199

XVII.  What Became Of Them 212

ILLUSTRATIONS.

Page
Evening Devotions Frontispiece.

Sanitary Measures 19

Playing “Injuns” 39

“Ole Billy” 59

“The Tar Baby” 79

“My Min’, Hit’s Made Up” 103

“Yer’ll all Be Havin’ De Croup Next” 135

“Well, My Invice Is Dis” 147

“Monahs ’pun Top Er Monahs” 163

“Bringin’ ’im the Picnic” 171

“Swinging On Grape-vines and Riding On Saplings” 195

“’Struck’n uv de Chil’en” 201

DIDDIE, DUMPS, AND TOT.

CHAPTER I.

Diddie, dumps, and tot.

They were three little sisters, daughters of a Southern planter, and they lived in a big white house on a cotton plantation in Mississippi.  The house stood in a grove of cedars and live-oaks, and on one side was a flower-garden, with two summer-houses covered with climbing roses and honeysuckles, where the little girls would often have tea-parties in the pleasant spring and summer days.  Back of the house was a long avenue of water-oaks leading to the quarters where the negroes lived.