Best of
all I loved to go to Josie's, and sit on the porch, eating
peaches, while the mother bustled and talked: how Josie had
bought the sewing-machine; how Josie worked at service in
winter, but that four dollars a month was "mighty little"
wages; how Josie longed to go away to school, but that it
"looked like" they never could get far enough ahead to let
her; how the crops failed and the well was yet unfinished;
and, finally, how "mean" some of the white folks were.
For two summers I lived in this little world; it was dull and
humdrum. The girls looked at the hill in wistful longing, and
the boys fretted and haunted Alexandria. Alexandria was
"town,"--a straggling, lazy village of houses, churches, and
shops, and an aristocracy of Toms, Dicks, and Captains.
Cuddled on the hill to the north was the village of the colored
folks, who lived in three- or four-room unpainted cottages,
some neat and homelike, and some dirty. The dwellings were
scattered rather aimlessly, but they centred about the twin
temples of the hamlet, the Methodist, and the Hard-Shell
Baptist churches. These, in turn, leaned gingerly on a sad-
colored schoolhouse.
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