along back-alley routes; that he and his race were something to be kept
out of sight as much as possible, as careful housekeepers manoeuver
their slops.

At Perryville a number of passengers boarded the up-river boat; two or
three drummers; a yellowed old hill woman returning to her Wayne County
home; a red-headed peanut-buyer; a well-groomed white girl in a tailor
suit; a youngish man barely on the right side of middle age who seemed
to be attending her; and some negro girls with lunches. The passengers
trailed from the railroad station down the river bank through a slush of
mud, for the river had just fallen and had left a layer of liquid mud to
a height of about twenty feet all along the littoral. The passengers
picked their way down carefully, stepping into one another's tracks in
the effort not to ruin their shoes. The drummers grumbled. The youngish
man piloted the girl down, holding her hand, although both could have
managed better by themselves.

Following the passengers came the trunks and grips on a truck. A negro
deck-hand, the truck-driver, and the white master of the launch shoved
aboard the big sample trunks of the drummers with grunts, profanity, and
much stamping of mud. Presently, without the formality of bell or
whistle, the launch clacked away from the landing and stood up the wide,
muddy river.

The river itself was monotonous and depressing. It was perhaps half a
mile wide, with flat, willowed mud banks on one side and low shelves of
stratified limestone on the other.

Trading-points lay at ten- or fifteen-mile intervals along the great
waterway. The typical landing was a dilapidated shed of a store half