Once upon a time
we knew country life so well and city life so little, that we
illustrated city life as that of a closely crowded country
district. Now the world has well-nigh forgotten what the
country is, and we must imagine a little city of black people
scattered far and wide over three hundred lonesome square
miles of land, without train or trolley, in the midst of cotton
and corn, and wide patches of sand and gloomy soil.
It gets pretty hot in Southern Georgia in July,--a sort of
dull, determined heat that seems quite independent of the
sun; so it took us some days to muster courage enough to
leave the porch and venture out on the long country roads,
that we might see this unknown world. Finally we started. It
was about ten in the morning, bright with a faint breeze, and
we jogged leisurely southward in the valley of the Flint. We
passed the scattered box-like cabins of the brickyard hands,
and the long tenement-row facetiously called "The Ark," and
were soon in the open country, and on the confines of the
great plantations of other days. There is the "Joe Fields
place"; a rough old fellow was he, and had killed many a
"nigger" in his day.
Pages:
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160