“Dis yer boy, Tom,” said the old man, straightening out his leg carefully, preparatory to getting up, “is jes’ like his gran’daddy.  I b’lieve ef somebody didn’ wake ‘im up he’d sleep till jedgmen’ day.  Heah ’e comes now.  Come on heah wid dat w’eelborrow, yer lazy, good-fer-nuthin’ rascal.”

Tom came slowly round the house with the wheelbarrow, and stood blinking and rolling his eyes as if he had just emerged from a sound sleep and was not yet half awake.

We took our way around the house, the ladies and I in front, Julius next and Tom bringing up the rear with the wheelbarrow.  We went by the well-kept grape-vines, heavy with the promise of an abundant harvest, through a narrow field of yellowing corn, and then picked our way through the watermelon-vines to the spot where the monarch of the patch had lain the day before, in all the glory of its coat of variegated green.  There was a shallow concavity in the sand where it had rested, but the melon itself was gone.

Lonesome Ben

There had been some talk among local capitalists about building a cotton mill on Beaver Creek, a few miles from my place on the sand hills in North Carolina, and I had been approached as likely to take an interest in such an enterprise.  While I had the matter under advisement it was suggested, as an inducement to my co-operation, that I might have the brick for the mill made on my place—­there being clay there suitable for the purpose—­and thus reduce the amount of my actual cash investment.  Most of my land was sandy, though I had observed several outcroppings of clay along the little creek or branch forming one of my boundaries.

One afternoon in summer, when the sun was low and the heat less oppressive than it had been earlier in the day, I ordered Julius, our old colored coachman, to harness the mare to the rockaway and drive me to look at the clay-banks.  When we were ready, my wife, who wished to go with me for the sake of the drive, came out and took her seat by my side.

We reached our first point of destination by a road running across the plantation, between a field of dark-green maize on the one hand and a broad expanse of scuppernong vines on the other.  The road led us past a cabin occupied by one of my farm-hands.  As the carriage went by at a walk, the woman of the house came to the door and curtsied.  My wife made some inquiry about her health, and she replied that it was poor.  I noticed that her complexion, which naturally was of a ruddy brown, was of a rather sickly hue.  Indeed, I had observed a greater sallowness among both the colored people and the poor whites thereabouts than the hygienic conditions of the neighborhood seemed to justify.