Thinking black; 22 years without a break in the long grass of Central ...

RED SUNSETS 287
cleansing, and her own anointing unto her own burial.
** Nay, who should go with my lord but me ? " said
she in response to the "death-orchestra" of the wailing
cunning women who were raining down *' tortoise-tears."
And then, in the evening, when the sough of the first
night-wind passes over the great fen -bog, behold this
old living sacrifice hobbling along with her gourd tobacco
pipe in its little basket to attend her own funeral—no
wail : nothing ! and the dark eternal sets in. There, in
a death of suffocation, she received her "John Anderson,
my Jo !
" in death's embrace, in life and death one.
Surely, here in a pathetic sense we see them sleeping
together at the foot of life's hill, after many "a cantie
day " together. On the surface, here is the kind of
incident claimed as a feather in the cap of polygamy,
and a mad Mormon would challenge monogamy to produce
in like environment a like demonstration of conjugal
affection. But such conjugal love of two souls only
proves monogamy. Only a week before their twin-death
and burial, who should come up from the plains to pay
us a most punctilious visit but precisely this dear old
lady, Mrs. John Anderson, and her Jo, of course ! They
hobbled over the hill together, a true instance of negro
man and wife who had projected their last visit to
" town," as they call our Luanza. A brief week thence
saw the tragedy.
{Later,)
By far the most exasperating "red sunset" known
to me was the death of my old friend of years, the great