mortgaged mule. Children? Yes,
seven; but they hadn't been to school this year,--couldn't afford books
and clothes, and couldn't spare their work. There go part of them to
the fields now,--three big boys astride mules, and a strapping girl
with bare brown legs. Careless ignorance and laziness here, fierce
hate and vindictiveness there;--these are the extremes of the Negro
problem which we met that day, and we scarce knew which we preferred.

Here and there we meet distinct characters quite out of the ordinary.
One came out of a piece of newly cleared ground, making a wide detour
to avoid the snakes. He was an old, hollow-cheeked man, with a drawn
and characterful brown face. He had a sort of self-contained
quaintness and rough humor impossible to describe; a certain cynical
earnestness that puzzled one. "The niggers were jealous of me over on
the other place," he said, "and so me and the old woman begged this
piece of woods, and I cleared it up myself. Made nothing for two
years, but I reckon I've got a crop now." The cotton looked tall and
rich, and we praised it. He curtsied low, and then bowed almost to the
ground, with an imperturbable gravity that seemed almost suspicious.
Then he continued, "My mule died last week,"--a calamity in this land
equal to a devastating fire in town,--"but a white man loaned me
another." Then he added, eyeing us, "Oh, I gets along with white
folks." We turned the conversation. "Bears? deer?" he answered,
"well, I should say there were," and he let fly a string of brave
oaths, as he told hunting-tales of the swamp. We left him standing
still in the middle of the road looking after us, and yet apparently
not noticing us.

The Whistle place, which includes his bit of land, was bought soon
after the war by an English syndicate, the "Dixie Cotton and Corn
Company." A marvellous deal of style their factor put on, with his
servants and coach-and-six; so much so that the concern soon landed in
inextricable bankruptcy. Nobody lives in the old house now, but a man
comes each winter out of the North and collects his high rents. I know
not which are the more touching,--such old empty houses, or the homes
of the masters' sons. Sad and bitter tales lie hidden back of those
white doors,--tales of poverty, of struggle, of disappointment. A
revolution such as that of '63 is a terrible thing; they that rose rich
in the morning often slept in paupers' beds. Beggars and vulgar
specula