In Old Plantation Days
The Memory of Martha
You may talk about banjo-playing if you will, but unless you heard old Ben in his palmy days you have no idea what genius can do with five strings stretched over the sheepskin.
You have been told, perhaps, that the banjo is not an expressive instrument. Well, in the hands of the ordinary player it is not. But you should have heard old Ben, as bending low over the neck, with closed eyes, he made the shell respond like a living soul to his every mood. It sang, it laughed, it sighed; and, just as the tears began welling up into the listener’s eyes, it would break out into a merry reel that would set one’s feet a-twinkling before one knew it.
Ben and his music were the delight of the whole plantation, white and black, master and man, and in the evening when he sat before his cabin door, picking out tune after tune, hymn, ballad or breakdown, he was always sure of an audience. Sometimes it was a group of white children from the big house, with a row of pickaninnies pressing close to them. Sometimes it was old Mas’ and Mis’ themselves who strolled up to the old man, drawn By his strains. Often there was company, and then Ben would be asked to leave his door and play on the veranda of the big house. Later on he would come back to Martha laden with his rewards, and swelled with the praise of his powers.
And Martha would say to him, “You, Ben, don’ you git conceity now; you des’ keep yo’ haid level.
Ben would laugh and say, “WelI, den, I tek de wickedness offen de banjo. Swing in, ol’ ‘ooman!” And he would drop into the accompaniment of one of the hymns that were the joy of Martha’s religious soul, and she would sing with him until, with a flourish and a thump, he brought the music to an end.
Next to his banjo, Ben loved Martha, and next to Ben, Martha loved the banjo. In a time and a region where frequent changes of partners were common, these two servants were noted for their single-hearted devotion to each other. He had never had any other wife, and she had called no other man husband. Their children had grown up and gone to other plantations, or to cabins of their own. So, alone, drawn closer by the habit of comradeship, they had grown old together—Ben, Martha and the banjo.
One day Martha was taken sick, and Ben came home to find her moaning with pain, but dragging about trying to get his supper. With loud pretended upbraidings he bundled her into bed, got his own supper, and then ran to his master with the news.
“Marfy she down sick, Mas’ Tawm,” he said, “an’ I’s mighty oneasy in my min’ ’bout huh. Seem lak she don’ look right to me outen huh eyes.”
“I’ll send the doctor right down, Ben,” said his master. “I don’t reckon it’s anything very serious. I wish you would come up to the house to-night with your banjo. Mr.
It was thoughtlessness on the master’s part; that was all. He did not believe that Martha could be very ill; but he would have reconsidered his demand if he could have seen on Ben’s face the l