Albany is to-day a wide-streeted, placid, Southern town,
with a broad sweep of stores and saloons, and flanking rows
of homes,--whites usually to the north, and blacks to the
south. Six days in the week the town looks decidedly too
small for itself, and takes frequent and prolonged naps.
But on Saturday suddenly the whole county disgorges itself
upon the place, and a perfect flood of black peasantry pours
through the streets, fills the stores, blocks the sidewalks,
chokes the thoroughfares, and takes full possession of the
town. They are black, sturdy, uncouth country folk, good-
natured and simple, talkative to a degree, and yet far more
silent and brooding than the crowds of the Rhine-pfalz, or
Naples, or Cracow. They drink considerable quantities of
whiskey, but do not get very drunk; they talk and laugh
loudly at times, but seldom quarrel or fight. They walk up
and down the streets, meet and gossip with friends, stare at
the shop windows, buy coffee, cheap candy, and clothes, and
at dusk drive home--happy? well no, not exactly happy, but
much happier than as though they had not come.
Thus Albany is a real capital,--a typical Southern county
town, the centre of the life of ten thousand souls; their point
of contact with the outer world, their centre of news and
gossip, their market for buying and selling, borrowing and
lending, their fountain of justice and law.
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