child that came into that pen, and examining its legs, and still more
secretly examining her own, stretched out before her on the ground.
How long it took she does not remember; in fact, she could not have
known, for she had no way of measuring time except by her thoughts and
feelings. But in her own way and time the due process of deliberation
was fulfilled, and the quotient made clear that, bowed or not, all
children's legs were of equal length except her own, and all were
alike, not one full, strong, hard, the other soft, flabby, wrinkled,
growing out of a knot at the hip. A whole psychological period
apparently lay between that conclusion and--a broom-handle
walking-stick; but the broomstick came, as it was bound to
come,--thank heaven!--from that premise, and what with stretching one
limb to make it longer, and doubling up the other to make it shorter,
she invented that form of locomotion which is still carrying her
through life, and with no more exaggerated leg-crookedness than many
careless negroes born with straight limbs display. This must have been
when she was about eight or nine. Hobbling on a broomstick, with, no
doubt, the same weird, wizened face as now, an innate sense of the
fitness of things must have suggested the kerchief tied around her big
head, and the burlaps rag of an apron in front of her linsey-woolsey
rag of a gown, and the bit of broken pipe-stem in the corner of her
mouth, where the pipe should have been, and where it was in after
years. That is the way she recollected herself, and that is the way
one recalls her now, with a few modifications.

The others came and went, but she was always there. It wasn't long
before she became "little Mammy" to the grown folks too; and the
newest inmates soon learned to cry: "Where's little Mammy?" "Oh,
little Mammy! little Mammy! Such a misery in my head [or my back, or
my stomach]! Can't you help me, little Mammy?" It was curious what a