Success with Small Fruits

by Edward Payson Roe

The negroes about Norfolk certainly do not wear an intimidated or "bull-dozed" air.

"Git off my row, dar, or I'll bust yo' head open," shouted a tall, strapping colored girl to a white man, and he got off her row with alacrity.

Mr. Young says that the negro laborers are easily managed, and will endure a great deal of severity if you deal "squarely" with them; but if you wrong them out of even five cents, they will never forget it. What's more, every citizen of "Blackville" will be informed of the fact, for what one knows they all seem to know very soon.

We were not long in learning to regard the strawberry farm as a little world within itself. It would be difficult to make the reader understand its life and "go" at certain hours of the day. Scores are coming and going; hundreds dot the fields; carts piled up with crates are moving hither and thither. At the same time the regular toil of cultivation is maintained. Back and forth between the young plants mules are drawing cultivators, and following these come a score or two women with light, sharp hoes. From the great crate manufactory is heard the whir of machinery and the click of hammers; at intervals the smithy sends forth its metallic voice, while from one centre of toil and interest to another the proprietor whisks in his open buggy at a speed that often seems perilous.

After all, Mr. Young's most efficient aid in his business was his father (recently deceased). It gave me pleasure to note the frequency and deference with which the senior's judgment wa& consulted, and I also observed that wherever the old gentleman's umbrella was seen in the field, all went well.

At four or five in the afternoon, the whole area would be picked over. The fields would be left to meadow-larks and quails, whose liquid notes well replaced the songs and cries of the pickers. Here and there a mule-cart would come straggling in. By night, all signs of life were concentrated around the barns and paying booth; but even from these one after another would drift away to the city, till at last scarcely a vestige of the hurry and business of the day would be left. The deep hush and quiet that settled down on the scene was all the more delightful from contrast. To listen to the evening wind among the pines, to watch the sun drop below the spires of Norfolk, and see the long shadows creep toward us; to let our thoughts flit whither they would, like the birds about us, was all the occupation we craved at this hour. Were we younger and more romantic, we might select this witching time for a visit to an ancient grave in one of the strawberry fields.

A mossy, horizontal slab marks the spot, and beneath it reposes the dust of a young English officer. One bright June day—so the legend is told—one hundred and sixteen years ago, this man, in the early summer of his life, was killed in a duel.

Lingering here, through the twilight, until the landscape grows as obscure as this rash youth's history, what fancies some might weave. As the cause of the tragedy, one would scarcely fail to see among the shadows the dim form and features of some old-time belle, whose smiles had kindled the fierce passion that was here quenched, more than a century since. Did she marry the rival, of surer aim and cooler head and heart, or did she haunt this place with regretful tears? Did she become a stout, prosaic woman, and end her days in whist and all the ancient proprieties, or fade into a remorseful wraith that still haunts her unfortunate lover's grave? One shivers, and grows superstitious. The light twinkling from the windows of the cottage under the pines becomes very attractive. As we fall asleep after such a visit, we like to think of the meadow-larks singing on the mossy tombstone in the morning.

Daring a rainy day, when driven from the field, we found plenty to interest us in the printing-office, smithy, and especially in the huge crate manufactory. Here were piled up coils of baskets that suggested strawberries for a million supper-tables. Hour after hour the mule-power engine drove saws, with teeth sharper than those of time, through the pine boards that soon became crates for the round quart baskets. These crates were painted green, marked with Mr. Young's name, and piled to the lofty, cobwebbed ceiling.

But Saturday is the culminating period of the week. The huge plantation has been gone over closely and carefully, for the morrow is Sunday, on which day the birds are the only pickers. Around the office, crate manufactory, and paying booth were gathered over a thousand people—a motley and variegated crowd, that the South only can produce. The odd and often coarse jargon, the infinite variety in appearance and character, suggested again that humanity is a very tangled problem. The shrewdness and accuracy, however, with which the most ignorant count their tickets and reckon their dues on their fingers, is a trait characteristic of all, and, having received the few shillings, which mean a luxurious Sunday, they trudge off to town, chattering volubly, whether any one listens or not.