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The Souls of Black Folk | W. E. B. DuBois | |
Of the Meaning of Progress |
Page 5 of 7 |
When the spring came, and the birds twittered, and the stream ran proud and full, little sister Lizzie, bold and thoughtless, flushed with the passion of youth, bestowed herself on the tempter, and brought home a nameless child. Josie shivered and worked on, with the vision of schooldays all fled, with a face wan and tired,--worked until, on a summer's day, some one married another; then Josie crept to her mother like a hurt child, and slept--and sleeps. I paused to scent the breeze as I entered the valley. The Lawrences have gone,--father and son forever,--and the other son lazily digs in the earth to live. A new young widow rents out their cabin to fat Reuben. Reuben is a Baptist preacher now, but I fear as lazy as ever, though his cabin has three rooms; and little Ella has grown into a bouncing woman, and is ploughing corn on the hot hillside. There are babies a-plenty, and one half-witted girl. Across the valley is a house I did not know before, and there I found, rocking one baby and expecting another, one of my schoolgirls, a daughter of Uncle Bird Dowell. She looked somewhat worried with her new duties, but soon bristled into pride over her neat cabin and the tale of her thrifty husband, and the horse and cow, and the farm they were planning to buy. |
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The Souls of Black Folk W. E. B. DuBois |
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