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Just one out of this notorious family turned out to be a virtuous, self-respecting woman with ideas of loyalty surprising in a person of her mentality. "Old Iz," her simple-minded, kind-hearted, sensual old man, was indeed a trial to her, but she bore up bravely before the world. She raised eleven children in a little two-room shack that stood on the edge of the woods. She was fond of her brood as a mother might be, though she never bothered much with such small matters as shoes and stockings, brushing the hair, and washing the hands and faces of her offspring. She kept herself fairly clean, for she had been brought up in a respectable family, but "with an old man like hers," and having to go out three days a week to work, her eleven children added too much to the already heavy burden. She was far too wise a woman to bother about what she couldn't help, or to attempt to control the uncontrollable. That she would have preferred cleanliness and order had they been easy to attain was attested by a box in the corner in which were laid away in excellent condition a pile of patchwork quilts of her own making. Bed quilts were most satisfactory objects to Hannah Ann; they stayed where they were put and had no perverse habit of rolling in the dirt. Her mentality was equal to caring properly for them -- but alas, this was not the case when it was a question of her babies! She did, however, prepare for them food when she was home and at night there was a hole under the roof into which those might crawl who could not find room in the bed.

Moron Types

It would be easy enough to stamp both Hanna Ann and "Old Iz" as mentally deficient, yet there is about the latter in particular a shrewdness, an ability to take care of himself that is characteristic of his class and is very misleading. To give him a precise test would be impossible, and though it is easy to find his children in the schools and to test them along with other boys and girls of the same mental stamp, the result does not enlighten us as the test of an adult Piney would do, so we bided our time.

The opportunity finally came in a round-about way. Caddie Dink had a daughter Beckie, who had married a man named Ed who was much older than she. He had come over at cranberry time and Beckie and he had got to "carryin' on." The squire married the pair after Ed swore that he was not a married man. Of course, Ed had a wife and child living farther up in the Pines, but she didn't count since long ago she had gotten tired of Ed and gone off with another man. But the newly married pair did not live happily; it was only a few weeks after the second child was born that Beckie left him for good, taking the baby with her. Ed, left with the older boy, carried him over to his other woman who agreed to care for the child and he went back to his lonely shack. Soon after this he took a colored man in as lodger. The two got into a fight when drunk and Ed did him up in such shape that he got twelve years in the state prison for attempted murder.

Beckie in the meantime began running the roads and was soon a notorious character. She was finally arrested for criminal neglect of her child and sent to the county house, from which place, aided by a Piney woman who worked there, she ran away within a week of her commitment. Some time afterward she was located in a nearby city, brought back by the constable and sent to jail, thus giving ample opportunity to study and test her mentality.

Beckie is twenty-three; well-formed, robust, healthy looking and bearing no stigma of degeneracy, unless it be a rather flat head, low forehead, and protruding lower jaw. She is fairly clean in her personal habits, is conscious of the value of pretty clothes and likes to look well, also likes what she calls a good time. She can do all sorts of coarse work, and occasionally is willing, but left to herself her idea of housekeeping seems to consist in preparing some sort of food, clearing up the dishes, sweeping the dirt under the stove or just outside the door, after which she sits and rocks herself or walks the streets or the roads smiling at every one.

She can neither sew nor cut out the simplest garment, not even an apron. She has perhaps no stronger characteristic than that of indifference. Fond as she is of dress, when she has no decent clothes, which often happens, she does not mind, but seems to take it as a matter of course. So also with the love of freedom which belongs to her wild, untamed nature. When she was brought back by the constable, her attitude was that of perfect unconcern. I met her at the station.

"Well,. Beckie," I said, laughing and shaking a finger at her, "what do you suppose they will do with you now?"

"Send me to jail."

"Well, don't you care?"

"What's the use of caring?"

"Were you ever at school, Beckie?"

"Yes, but I didn't get no learnin'; been awful sorry since."

"Can't you read or write?"

"No."

"Why couldn't you learn?"

"Didn't seem as though there was anything in my head could take it."