me, gene me!
Ben d'nuli, ben d'le--"

Tom died about 1787, but of him came many sons, and one, Jack, who
helped in the War of 1812. Of Jack and his wife, Violet, was born a
mighty family, splendidly named: Harlow and Ira, Cloe, Lucinda, Maria,
and Othello! I dimly remember my grandfather, Othello,--or "Uncle
Tallow,"--a brown man, strong-voiced and redolent with tobacco, who sat
stiffly in a great high chair because his hip was broken. He was
probably a bit lazy and given to wassail. At any rate, grandmother had a
shrewish tongue and often berated him. This grandmother was Sarah--"Aunt
Sally"--a stern, tall, Dutch-African woman, beak-nosed, but
beautiful-eyed and golden-skinned. Ten or more children were theirs, of
whom the youngest was Mary, my mother.

Mother was dark shining bronze, with a tiny ripple in her black hair,
black-eyed, with a heavy, kind face. She gave one the impression of
infinite patience, but a curious determination was concealed in her
softness. The family were small farmers on Egremont Plain, between Great
Barrington and Sheffield, Massachusetts. The bits of land were too small
to support the great families born on them and we were always poor. I
never remember being cold or hungry, but I do remember that shoes and
coal, and sometimes flour, caused mother moments of anxious thought in
winter, and a new suit was an event!

At about the time of my birth economic pressure was transmuting the
family generally from farmers to "hired" help. Some revolted and
migrated westward, others went cityward as cooks and barbers. Mother
worked for some years at house service in Great Barrington, and after a
disappointed love episode with a cousin, who went to California, she met
and married Alfred Du Bois and went to town to live by the golden river
where I was born.

Alfred, my father, must have seemed a splendid vision in that little
valley under the shelter of those mighty hills. He was small and
beautiful of face and feature, just tinted with the sun, his curly hair
chiefly revealing his kinship to Africa. In nature he was a
dreamer,--romantic, indolent, kind, unreliable. He had in him the making
of a poet, an adventurer, or a Beloved Vagabond, according to the life
that closed round him; and that life gave him all too little. His
father, Alexander Du Bois, cloaked under a stern, austere demeanor a
passionate revolt against the world. He, too, was small, but squarish. I
remember him as I saw him first,