'LIGHT AND COME IN 189 
it, and then sets them in the oven. His oven, out of 
doors near the shed in which he works, is a long, 
low vault of bricks and clay, with a fire-hole at one 
end and an opening at the other. He sets in his jugs, 
makes up a wood fire, and bakes them until they are 
done. 
It seems as though one could learn to tell, from 
looking at a jug, what manner of man made it — 
and whether he was black or white. Black men's 
jugs are like them, some way, careless, generous, 
picturesque. Rich's jugs are homely, but one likes 
them, they are so honest. A jug made by a potter 
who dug the clay out of the bank with his own hands, 
and soaked it, and ground it, and shaped it, and 
glazed it, and baked it, must be a wholesome sort of 
jug to have in any house. We had formed the habit 
of setting groups of Rich's jugs in the fireplace, 
partly to heat the water, and partly for the pictur- 
esque effect, long before we knew of the ebony hands 
that moulded them out of the gray clay of the Tiger 
River. 
The place of the jug would seem to be firmly 
established in the mountains. Yet in these later days 
its existence is threatened. The tin lard pail has risen 
above the horizon. Everybody buys lard, and the 
"buckets" become family treasures. Even into the 
remotest regions the insidious foe has crept, until 
one finds the unlovely lard pail occupying the place 
where, a few years ago, only the decorative brown 
earthenware jug would have stood. 
