METHODS OF CULTURE IN THE SOUTH. l6l 



burned pipes are hastily emptied ; gingerbread and like 

 delicacies are stuffed into capacious mouths, since hands 

 must be employed at once. Packers, mules, everybody, 

 everything, are put upon the double-quick to prepare for 

 the shower. It is too late, however, for down come the 

 huge drops as they can fall only in the South. The land- 

 scape grows obscure, the forms of the pickers in the distance 

 become dim and misty, and when at last it lightens up a 

 little, they have disappeared from the fields. There they go, 

 streaming and dripping toward the bams and sheds, looking 

 as bedraggled as a flock of black Spanish fowls. Such of 

 the mule-drivers as have been caught, now that they are in 

 for it, drive leisurely by with the heavy crates that they 

 should have gathered up more promptly. 



The cloud did not prove a passing one, and the rain fell 

 so long and copiously that further picking for the day was 

 abandoned. Some jogged off to the city, at a pace that 

 nothing but a fiery storm could have quickened. A hun- 

 dred or two remained under the sheds, singing and laugh- 

 ing. Men and women, and many bright young negro girls, 

 too, lit their pipes and waited till they could gather at the 

 " paying booth," near the entrance of the farm, after the 

 rain was over. This booth was a small shop, extemporized 

 of rough boards by an enterprising grocer of the city. One 

 side was open, like the counter of a restaurant, and within, 

 upon the grass, as yet untrodden, were barrels and boxes 

 containing the edible enormities which seem indigenous to 

 the semi-grocery and eating-house. In most respects the 

 place resembled the sutler's stand of our army days. There 

 was a small window on one end of the booth, and at this 

 sat the grocer, metamorphosed into a paymaster, with a 

 huge bag of coin, which he rapidly exchanged for the straw- 

 berry tickets. Our last glimpse of the pickers, who had 



