PENELOPE AND NAUSICAA 199 
embraces her. Even more picturesque than the 
white woman at her task is perhaps the black woman 
whom one often sees in the lower mountains stand- 
ing under a great laurel bush or a^shady tree, dipp- 
ing the clothes from her steaming black pot, then 
valiantly paddling them on a tree stump. There is 
something so leisurely and yet so hearty about these 
black people — and they satisfy your love for the 
picturesque without exciting any feeling of pity. 
When you look into their great shining eyes you 
know that when all is said they love to wash. And 
they have never any feeling of shame about it. 
Though for that matter neither have the mountain 
women of the white race when you get far enough 
from the villages, where the ferment of civilization 
has crept in, the ferment whose first action is always 
to make people ashamed to be seen working. 
In accordance with the customs of the country, the 
women do their washing as they do everything else, 
in the manner most convenient for the moment. 
They have no roof to shelter them in winter, but the 
year round wash "down at the branch" in the open 
air. Often the tub stands on the ground, the woman 
leaning over it in a way to make one's back ache in 
sympathy. But as usual your sympathy is wasted. 
"Why does n't your husband make you a bench? " 
you cry in indignation, and she, rising up smiling 
from the suds, replies — "I like it better this way, 
a body don't have to lift up the water, nor lift down 
the tub to empty it." 
Washboards of course are as unknown as darning- 
