the new three-story brick hotel, the pride of the metropolis. Not even
the Court House at the county seat is as imposing. Main Street is
flanked by parallel rows of one and two story, brick store-buildings,
from the fronts of which, and covering the wide, board-sidewalks,
extend permanent, wooden awnings; these are bordered by long racks
used for the ponies and mules of the Saturday crowds of "bottom
niggers" and "post oak farmers." The higher ground east of Main Street
is preempted by the comfortable residences of Donaldsville proper and
culminates in Quality Hill, where the two bankers and a select group
of wealthy bottom-planters lived in aristocratic supremacy. On this
particular afternoon, the town's only business street was about
deserted. On its shady side were hitched a few Texas ponies whose
drooping heads and wilted ears bespoke the heat--so hot it was that
the flies, even, did not molest them. Scattered groups of lounging,
idle men indicated the enervating influence of the sizzling 108
degrees in the shade.

But Donaldsville was not dead--perspiring certainly, but still
possessing one lively evidence of animation. From time to time peals
of boisterous laughter, boisterous but refreshing as the breath of a
breeze, a congenial, almost contagious laughter would roll up and down
Main Street even to its box-house fringes. Each peal would call forth
from some dusky denizen of the suburbs the proud recognition: "Dar's
Doctor Jim laughin' some mo'." Doctor Jim's laughter was one of
Donaldsville's attractive features. His friends living a mile away
claimed they often heard it--and everybody was Doctor Jim's friend. No
more genial, generous gentleman of the early post-bellum Texas South
could be found. His was an unfathomed well of good nature, good humor
and good stories. He knew all comers whether he had met them before or
not. For him, it was never "Stranger," it was always "Friend."