by William Wells Brown · 1880
Memoir · Classics
William Wells Brown returns to the South of his childhood and writes about its people, Black and white, with sketches, memories and stories.
Content note: Written in 1880, this book uses the language of its time, including racial terms that are offensive today, and describes slavery.
Ten miles north of the city of St. Louis, in the State of Missouri, forty years ago, on a pleasant plain, sloping off toward a murmuring stream, stood a large frame-house, two stories high; in front was a beautiful lake, and, in the rear, an old orchard filled with apple, peach, pear, and plum trees, with boughs untrimmed, all bearing indifferent fruit. The mansion was surrounded with piazzas, covered with grape-vines, clematis, and passion flowers; the Pride of China mixed its oriental-looking foliage with the majestic magnolia, and the air was redolent with the fragrance of buds peeping out of every nook, and nodding upon you with a most unexpected welcome.
The tasteful hand of art, which shows itself in the grounds of European and New-England villas, was not seen there, but the lavish beauty and harmonious disorder of nature was permitted to take its own course, and exhibited a want of taste so commonly witnessed in the sunny South.
The killing effects of the tobacco plant upon the lands of “Poplar Farm,” was to be seen in the rank growth of the brier, the thistle, the burdock, and
the jimpson weed, showing themselves wherever the strong arm of the bondman had not kept them down.
