134 Success with Small Fruits. 



The broad fields seemed all the more vast from the obscurity, and the 

 stooping forms of the fruit-gatherers took on odd and fantastic shapes in 

 the silvery mist. 



But while we drank our coffee the sun sipped these morning vapors, 

 and when we stepped out under the pines, the day was hourly growing 

 brighter and warmer. The balmy, fragrant air, the meadow larks singing 

 in the distance, the cheery voices of the pickers in an adjacent field, 

 would tempt gloom itself to forget its care and stroll away through the 

 sunlight. 



The pickers were beginning to take possession of a field containing 

 thirty acres of Triomphe de Gands, and we followed them, and there lit 

 on one of the oddest characters on the plantation "Sam Jubilee," the 

 " row-man," black as night, short, stout, and profane. It is Sam's busi- 

 ness to give each picker a row of berries, and he carries a brass-headed 

 cane as the baton of authority. As we came up, he was whirling a glazed 

 hat of portentous size in one hand, and gesticulating so wildly with his 

 cane that one might think he was in convulsions of rage, but we soon 

 learned that this was " his way." 



" Heah, you, dah !" he vociferated, to the slouching, leisurely pickers 

 that were drifting after him, " what 's de matter wid yer j'ints ? Step 



along lively, or, by " and then came a volley of the most outlandish 



oaths ever uttered by a human tongue. 



" Don't swear so, Sam," said Mr. Young. 



" Can't help it, sah. Dey makes me swar. Feels as if I could bust 

 inter ten thousand emptins, dey 's so agerwatin. Heah, my sister, take dat 

 row. You, gemlin" (to a white man), " take dat. Heah, chile, step in dar 

 an' pick right smart, or I '11 warm yer ! " 



Sam " brothers and sisters " the motley crowd he domineers like a 

 colored preacher, but I fear he is not " in good and regular standing " in 

 any church in Norfolk. 



" He can give out rows more rapidly and systematically than any man 

 I ever had," said Mr. Young, and we soon observed that wherever Jubilee 

 led, with his stentorian voice and emphatic gestures, there was life and 

 movement. Thus we learned that although there might be 1,500 people 

 in the fields, there was no hap-hazard picking. Each one would be 

 assigned a row, which could not be left until all the ripe berries on it were 

 gathered. 



Passing to and fro across the fields are the two chief overseers of the 

 farm, Harrison and Peters, both apparently full-blooded negroes, but, in 

 the vernacular of the South, " right smart men." They have been with 



