CHAPTER LIX.
MRS. DELLA IRVING HAYDEN.
At the close of the Civil War we find the subject of our sketch in the town of Tarboro, N. C., without a mother's care, her mother having in the early days of the war moved to the Old Dominion.
In her incipiency she knew the care of none but a grandmother, to whom she was devoted with all of the devotion a child could bestow. Though separated for years by landscape, there continued in the mother's breast that love and devotion that are peculiar to her sex; hence she returned in search of her lost child in 1865, finding her in vigorous health. She, as the shepherd doth the lost sheep, took her child upon her breast and over rocky steeps and swollen streams wound her way back to Virginia.
As the infant grew she proved to be of a brilliant mind, and even when but a child exhibited great tact in the management of little folks around her. There being no free schools in operation at that day for colored children, she was taught to spell by a white friend who consented to teach her at the request of her mother. From the old Webster spelling-book she made her start, and soon learned as far as baker—a great accomplishment in those days. After getting a foretaste of an education she, then a young miss, became very anxious for an education. Free schools were not yet in existence, so she entered school seven miles away in Nansemond
