Methods of Culture in the South. 



129 



they can fall only in the South. The landscape 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 barns 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 1 but a fiery storm could have quickened. 

 A hundred or two remained under the sheds, singing and laughing. 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, extempo- 

 rized 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 



Paying off Hands. 



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, meta- 

 17 



