to sit up alone and toddle about, another
affliction, the nervous motion of his body, be-
came apparent. His mother, a buxom young
negro wench who was laundress for the d'Ar-
naults, concluded that her blind baby was
"not right" in his head, and she was ashamed
of him. She loved him devotedly, but he was
so ugly, with his sunken eyes and his "fidgets,"
that she hid him away from people. All the
dainties she brought down from the "Big
House" were for the blind child, and she beat
and cuffed her other children whenever she
found them teasing him or trying to get his
chicken-bone away from him. He began to
talk early, remembered everything he heard,
and his mammy said he "wasn't all wrong."
She named him Samson, because he was blind,
but on the plantation he was known as "yel-
low Martha's simple child." He was docile and
obedient, but when he was six years old he
began to run away from home, always taking
the same direction. He felt his way through
the lilacs, along the boxwood hedge, up to the
south wing of the "Big House," where Miss
Nellie d'Arnault practiced the piano every
morning. This angered his mother more than
anything else he could have done; she was so

[[211]]

p210 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p211w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p212

v?