Then the father, who
worked Colonel Wheeler's farm on shares, would tell me
how the crops needed the boys; and the thin, slovenly mother,
whose face was pretty when washed, assured me that Lugene
must mind the baby. "But we'll start them again next week."
When the Lawrences stopped, I knew that the doubts of the
old folks about book-learning had conquered again, and so,
toiling up the hill, and getting as far into the cabin as possi-
ble, I put Cicero "pro Archia Poeta" into the simplest En-
glish with local applications, and usually convinced them--for
a week or so.
On Friday nights I often went home with some of the
children,--sometimes to Doc Burke's farm. He was a great,
loud, thin Black, ever working, and trying to buy the seventy-
five acres of hill and dale where he lived; but people said that
he would surely fail, and the "white folks would get it all."
His wife was a magnificent Amazon, with saffron face and
shining hair, uncorseted and barefooted, and the children
were strong and beautiful. They lived in a one-and-a-half-
room cabin in the hollow of the farm, near the spring. The
front room was full of great fat white beds, scrupulously neat;
and there were bad chromos on the walls, and a tired centre-
table.
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