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Mine Eyes Have Seen

Alice Dunbar Nelson
Contents (4)
  1. CONTENTS
  2. CHARACTERS
  3. A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR
  4. A NOTE FROM THE PUBLISHER

Mine Eyes Have Seen

A Play in One Act

Alice Dunbar Nelson

Mine Eyes Have Seen: A Play in One Act was first published in 1918.

This edition published by Mint Editions 2021.

ISBN 9781513282459 | E-ISBN 9781513287478

Published by Mint Editions®

minteditionbooks.com

Publishing Director: Jennifer Newens

Design & Production: Rachel Lopez Metzger

Project Manager: Micaela Clark

Typesetting: Westchester Publishing Services

CONTENTS

  1. CHARACTERS
  2. BEGIN READING

CHARACTERS

DAN: the cripple

CHRIS: the younger brother

LUCY: the sister

MRS. O’NEILL: an Irish neighbor

JAKE: a Jewish boy

JULIA: Chris’ sweetheart

BILL HARVEY: a muleteer

CORNELIA LEWIS: a settlement worker

Time: Now (1918)

Place: A manufacturing city in the northern part of the United States.

(Kitchen of a tenement. All details of furnishing emphasize sordidness—laundry tubs, range, table covered with oil cloth, pine chairs. Curtain discloses Dan in a rude imitation of a steamer chair, propped by faded pillows, his feet covered with a patch-work quilt)

(Lucy is bustling about the range preparing a meal. During the conversation she moves from range to table, setting latter and making ready the noon-day meal)

(Dan is about thirty years old; face thin, pinched, bearing traces of suffering. His hair is prematurely grey; nose finely chiselled; eyes wide, as if seeing BEYOND. Complexion brown)

(Lucy is slight, frail, brown-skinned, about twenty, with a pathetic face. She walks with a slight limp)

DAN: Isn’t it most time for him to come home, Lucy?

LUCY: It’s hard to tell, Danny, dear; Chris doesn’t come home on time anymore. It’s half-past twelve, and he ought to be here by the clock, but you can’t tell any more—you can’t tell.

DAN: Where does he go?

LUCY: I know where he doesn’t go, Dan, but where he does, I can’t say. He’s not going to Julia’s any more lately. I’m afraid, Dan, I’m afraid!

DAN: Of what, Little Sister?

LUCY: Of everything; oh, Dan, it’s too big, too much for me—the world outside, the street—Chris going and coming home nights moody-eyed; I don’t understand.

DAN: And so you’re afraid? That’s been the trouble from the beginning of time—we’re afraid because we don’t understand.

LUCY: (coming down front, with a dish cloth in her hand) Oh, Dan, wasn’t it better in the old days when we were back home—in the little house with the garden, and you and father coming home nights and mother getting supper, and Chris and I studying lessons in the dining-room at the table—we didn’t have to eat and live in the kitchen then, and—

DAN: (grimly)—And the notices posted on the fence for us to leave town because niggers had no business having such a decent home.

LUCY: (unheeding the interruption)—And Chris and I reading the wonderful books and laying our plans—

DAN: —To see them go up in the smoke of our burned home.

LUCY: (continuing, her back to Dan, her eyes lifted, as if seeing a vision of retrospect)—And everyone petting me because I had hurt my foot when I was little, and father—

DAN: —Shot down like a dog for daring to defend his home—

LUCY: —Calling me “Little Brown Princess,” and telling mother—

DAN: —Dead of pneumonia and heartbreak in this bleak climate.

LUCY: —That when you—

DAN: —Maimed for life in a factory of hell! Useless—useless—broken on the wheel.