They dislike wheat bread, as too light and unsatisfying, and they always
grumble when flour is measured out to them instead of meal. Coffee is a
luxury used only on Sunday. The table is set off by a few china plates
and cups, but there are no dishes, the meat being served in the utensil
in which it is cooked. On working-days breakfast and dinner are carried
to the hands in the fields by a boy who has collected at the different
houses the tin buckets containing these meals.

The hands are as busy in winter as during any other part of the year.
Much of their time is then taken up in manipulating the tobacco, which
has been stored away in one large barn, and preparing it for market, the
first step toward which is to strip the leaves from the stalk and then
carefully separate those of an inferior from those of a superior
quality. Although there are many grades, the negroes are able to
distinguish them at a glance and assort them accordingly. They are not
engaged in this work of selection continuously from day to day, but at
intervals, for they can handle the tobacco only when the weather is damp
enough to moisten the leaf, otherwise it is so brittle that it would
crack and fall to pieces under their touch. They like this work, for the
barn is kept very comfortable by large stoves, they do not have to move
from their seats, and they can all sit very sociably together, talking,
laughing, and singing. It contrasts very agreeably with other work which
they are called upon to do at this season,--namely, the grubbing of new
grounds, from which they shrink with unconcealed repugnance, for outside
of a mine there is no kind of labor more arduous or exacting. The land
cleared is that from which the original forest has been cut, leaving
stumps thickly scattered over the surface, from which a heavy
scrub-growth springs up. Active, quick, and industrious as the negroes
may be in the tobacco-, corn-, or wheat fields, they show here great
indolence, and move forward very slowly with their hoes, axes, and