successor to the name‚ÅÝ‚Äîhold some fifty thousand acres. They may be considered representative types. Then, Mr. ¬ÝMaxwell has ten thousand acres and Mr. ¬ÝTolliver a thousand.‚Äù
Miss Taylor wrote rapidly. “And cotton?” she asked.
“We raise considerable cotton, but not nearly what we ought to; nigger labor is too worthless.”
“Oh! The Negroes are not, then, very efficient?”
‚ÄúEfficient!‚Äù snorted Mr. ¬ÝCaldwell; at last she had broached a phase of the problem upon which he could dilate with fervor. ‚ÄúThey‚Äôre the lowest-down, ornriest‚ÅÝ‚Äîbegging your pardon‚ÅÝ‚Äîgood-for-nothing loafers you ever heard of. Why, we just have to carry them and care for them like children. Look yonder,‚Äù he pointed across the square to the courthouse. It was an old square brick-and-stucco building, sombre and stilted and very dirty. Out of it filed a stream of men‚ÅÝ‚Äîsome black and shackled; some white and swaggering and liberal with tobacco-juice; some white and shaven and stiff. ‚ÄúCourt‚Äôs just out,‚Äù pursued Mr. ¬ÝCaldwell, ‚Äúand them niggers have just been sent to the gang‚ÅÝ‚Äîyoung ones, too; educated but good for nothing. They‚Äôre all that way.‚Äù
Miss Taylor looked up a little puzzled, and became aware of a battery of eyes and ears. Everybody seemed craning and listening, and she felt a sudden embarrassment and a sense of half-veiled hostility in the air. With one or two further perfunctory questions, and a hasty expression of thanks, she escaped into the air.
The whole square seemed loafing and lolling‚ÅÝ‚Äîthe white world perched on stoops and chairs, in doorways and windows; the black world filtering down from doorways to sidewalk and curb. The hot, dusty quadrangle stretched in dreary deadness toward the temple of the town,