Age and careless heating had given
the surface a fine reticulation. His cup and saucer, on the contrary,
were thick pieces of ware such as the cabin-boys toss about on
steamboats. The whole ceramic melange told of the fortuities of English
colonial and early American life, of the migration of families westward.
No doubt, once upon a time, that dawn-pink Worcester had married into a
Whieldon cauliflower family. A queer sort of genealogy might be traced
among Southern families through their mixtures of tableware.
As Peter mused over these implications of long ancestral lines, it
reminded him that he had none. Over his own past, over the lineage of
nearly every negro in the South, hung a curtain. Even the names of the
colored folk meant nothing, and gave no hint of their kin and clan. At
the end of the war between the States, Peter's people had selected names
for themselves, casually, as children pick up a pretty stone. They meant
nothing. It occurred to Peter for the first time, as he sat looking at
the chinaware, that he knew nothing about himself; whether his kinsmen
were valiant or recreant he did not know.
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