I am trying to give you the flavour of the town.
They had prohibition there, too ... long before it won nation-wide power ... consequently the negroes drove a vast trade in bootlegging ... and a concomitant prostitution of coloured women and girls throve. One or two students on the hill had, to my knowledge, negro mistresses of whom they were fond....
The drug stores did a thriving business in the sale of spiritus frumenti—for "snake bite" and "stomach trouble," which seemed to be prevalent and epidemic throughout the community.
Saturday was market day for the farmers who lived in the adjoining countryside ... and the livery stables where they put up their horses were also resorts for gambling and the selling of "bootleg" booze....
These farmers were a wild lot ... something like European peasants in their smacking of the soil and the country to which they belonged, but with a verve and dash of their own distinctly American.
There were three or four cheap restaurants that catered solely to their trade ... "a square meal for a quarter" ... and a square meal they served ... multitudes of fried stuff ... beefsteak, potatoes, boiled ham, cabbage, heaps of white bread constantly replenished as it was voraciously devoured ... always plenty of hot, steaming coffee. Where these restaurants profited I could never see ... unless by a little bootlegging on the side.
It was to one of them that I repaired when I left my malodorous job. The same one where I had spent my first night in town.
Langworth sent for me one day.