The time required to accomplish this relapse was one day—the day which comes but once a year—Christmas!
The day found every negro in Tickfall in a receptive mood. As a result, every white man in the town had the privilege of a few moments’ conversation with all the blacks in the town some time during the day.
The sun-slashed streets of Tickfall were filled with them, moving to and fro, like ants in a hill, all feverish in their activity, and all so shoutingly happy that the town was as noisy as a parrot’s cage.
Their order of advance was something like this:
a The servants of the household.
b Those who had been servants during the year.
c Servants of former years.
d Those who had done odd jobs.
e Those whose names the white man knew.
f Those who knew the white man’s name.
g All the other niggers in town.
And each white man had supplied himself with about half a barrel of cheap candy, three or four bunches of bananas, a barrel of apples, a hatful of small change, and a supply of tobacco, cigars, plugs, and snuff, bestowing these gifts according to his inclination.
The first ceremony of the day was the formal distribution of the eggnog to the servants of the household.
Of course, after Hitch Diamond, Vinegar Atts, Figger Bush, and the rest of our colored friends had spent three days in a frightful ride upon the water-wagon, their repeated visits to the homes of their Tickfall white friends where the eggnog foamed like the surf of the sea had a most demoralizing effect.
In fact, Hitch Diamond and Vinegar Atts called upon Marse Tom Gaitskill and made themselves such nuisances that Gaitskill locked them both up in an empty corn-crib and turned the water-hose on them.
Death had no terrors for these people on Christmas Day.