"Missy, Missy, poor little thing, Tied to Mammy's apron string." I had not a word to answer. It was only too true. Never in all my life had I been beyond our own big gate without an attendant... The "Mammy" filled an essential role in the family life on a plantation. In some families she stood next to "Mother" in the affections of the children; and her authority was often second to none. A great offense in her eyes was a lapse in courtesy, and a Southern writer has aptly said that wherever you saw an old-time Mammy you could be sure some Southern child was being taught good manners. All that Little Missy tells of child-life in the Old South is true. Never were there happier or more care-free children than those who grew up on the great plantations, in the midst of the kindly black folk who were their guardians and their friends. Perhaps beloved author Maud Lindsay wrote Little Missy from the colorful childhood stories of growing up on the Winston Plantation in Tuscumbia, Alabama that her mother passed along to her. Reminiscences of growing up in a simpler time; when life in the Old South was full of beauty and grace.