"looked like" they never could get far enough ahead to let
her; how the crops failed and the well was yet unfinished;
and, finally, how "mean" some of the white folks were.

For two summers I lived in this little world; it was dull and
humdrum. The girls looked at the hill in wistful longing, and
the boys fretted and haunted Alexandria. Alexandria was
"town,"--a straggling, lazy village of houses, churches, and
shops, and an aristocracy of Toms, Dicks, and Captains.
Cuddled on the hill to the north was the village of the colored
folks, who lived in three- or four-room unpainted cottages,
some neat and homelike, and some dirty. The dwellings were
scattered rather aimlessly, but they centred about the twin
temples of the hamlet, the Methodist, and the Hard-Shell
Baptist churches. These, in turn, leaned gingerly on a sad-
colored schoolhouse. Hither my little world wended its crooked
way on Sunday to meet other worlds, and gossip, and won-
der, and make the weekly sacrifice with frenzied priest at the
altar of the "old-time religion." Then the soft melody and
mighty cadences of Negro song fluttered and thundered.

I have called my tiny community a world, and so its
isolation made it; and yet there was among us but a half-
awakened common consciousness, sprung from common joy
and grief, at burial, birth, or wedding; from a common
hardship in poverty, poor land, and low wages; and, above
all, from the sight of the Veil that hung between us and
Opportunity. All this caused us to think some thoughts to-
gether; but these, when ripe for speech, were spoken in
various languages. Those whose eyes twenty-five and more