“The Silver Fleece,” she murmured. Without further word, slowly she arose and walked down the stairs, and out into the swamp. Miss Smith watched her go; she knew that every step must be the keen prickle of awakening flesh. Yet the girl walked steadily on.
It was the Christmas‚ÅÝ‚Äînot Christmas-tide of the North and West, but Christmas of the Southern South. It was not the festival of the Christ Child, but a time of noise and frolic and license, the great Payday of the year when black men lifted their heads from a year‚Äôs toiling in the earth, and, hat in hand, asked anxiously: ‚ÄúMaster, what have I earned? Have I paid my old debts to you? Have I made my clothes and food? Have I got a little of the year‚Äôs wage coming to me?‚Äù Or, more carelessly and cringingly: ‚ÄúMaster, gimme a Christmas gift.‚Äù
The lords of the soil stood round, gauging their cotton, measuring their men. Their stores were crowded, their scales groaned, their gins sang.
In the long run public opinion determines all wage, but in more primitive times and places, private opinion, personal judgment of some man in power, determines.
The Black Belt is primitive and the landlord wields the power.
“What about Johnson?” calls the head clerk.
“Well, he’s a faithful nigger and needs encouragement; cancel his debt and give him ten dollars for Christmas.” Colonel Cresswell glowed, as if he were full of the season’s spirit.
“And Sanders?”
“How’s his cotton?”
“Good, and a lot of it.”