Now Sears, whom we met next lolling under the chubby
oak-trees, was of quite different fibre. Happy?--Well, yes;
he laughed and flipped pebbles, and thought the world was as
it was. He had worked here twelve years and has nothing but
a 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.
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