Methods of Culture in the South. 125 



Along the road that skirted the field, and against a pretty background 

 of half- grown pines, motley forms and groups were moving to and fro, 

 some seeking the " buyers " with full trays, others returning to their 

 stations in the field with a new supply of empty baskets. Some of the 

 pickers were drifting away to other fields, a few seeking work late in the 

 day ; more, bargaining with the itinerant venders of pies, made to last all 

 summer if not sold, gingerbread, " pones," and other nondescript edibles, 

 at which an ostrich would hesitate in well-grounded fear of indigestion, 

 but for which sable and semi-sable pickers exchange their berry tickets 



and pennies as eagerly as we buy 

 Vienna rolls. Two or three ba- 

 rouches and buggies that had 



brought visitors were mingled with 

 the mule-carts ; and grouped together 

 for a moment might be seen elegantly 

 attired ladies from New York, slender 

 mulatto girls, clad in a single tattered 

 gown which scantily covered their bare 

 ankles and feet, and stout, shiny negro 

 women, their waists tied with a string The First Glimpse. 



to prevent their flowing drapery from 



impeding their work. Flitting to and fro were numberless colored chil- 

 dren, bare-headed, bare-legged, and often with not a little of their sleek 

 bodies gleaming through the innumerable rents of their garments, their 

 eyes glittering like black beads, and their white teeth showing on the 

 slightest provocation to mirth. Indeed, the majority of the young men 

 and women were chattering and laughing much of the time, and only 

 those well in the shadow of age worked on in a stolid, plodding manner. 

 Mingled indiscriminately with the colored people were not a few white 



