"Well, it is generally so; but we have found that to plow the land after the potatoes have been dug, and then seed the same in turnips is practical. When the turnips, with their wealth of green leaves are at their best, then, we plow them under and the freezing does the rest."
"A wonderful mulch!"
"It is very simple when one looks into it." They were walking through the fields, and without her knowing it, he studied her. The kind of girl and the kind of family his race needed, he could see. In his observation of the clan to which he had been born, practicability was the greatest need. Indeed he was sometimes surprised that his race could be so impracticable. Further west in this State, his uncles, who, like all Negroes previous to the emancipation, had been born slaves, had gone West in the latter seventies and early eighties, and settled on land. With time this land had mounted to great values and the holders had been made well-to-do thereby. A case of evolution, on all sides. Over all the Central West, this had been so. At the price land now brought it would have been impossible for any to own land. There happened, then as had recently, a series of dry years—seemingly about every twenty years. To pull through such a siege, the old settlers usually did much better than the new. To begin with, they were financially better able; but on the other hand, they did not, as a rule, take the chances new settlers were inclined to take. Because two or three years were seasonable, and crops were good, they did not become overly enthusiastic and plunge deeply into debt as he had done. He could see his error now, and the chances new settlers were inclined to take. Because moreover, he had been so much alone—his wedded life had been so brief, and even during it, he was confused so much with disadvantages, that he had never attempted to subsidize his farming with stock raising. Perhaps this had been his most serious mistake; to have had a hundred head of cattle during such a period as had just passed, would have been to have gone through it without disaster.
He felt rather guilty as he strolled beside this girl whose father had succeeded. But one thing he would not do, and that was make excuses. He had ever been opposed to excusing away his failures. If he had failed, he had failed, no excuses should be resorted to. But as they strolled through the fields of potatoes he could not help observe the contrast between the woman he had married, and the one now beside him that he might have had for wife. Here was one, and he did not know her so well as to conclude what kind of girl in all things she was, but it was a self evident fact that she was practical. Whereas, he had only to recall that not only had his wife been impractical, but that her father before her had been so. He recalled that awful night before he had taken her away, at Colome, when that worthy when he chanced to use the word practical, had exclaimed: "I'm so tired of hearing that word I do not know what to do!" and it was seconded by his cohort in evil, Ethel.
His race was filled with such as N.J. McCarthy, he knew; but not only were they hypocrites, and in a measure enemies to success but enemies to society as well. How many were there in his race who purported to be sacrificing their very soul for the cause of Ethiopia but when so little as medical aid was required in their families, called in a white physician to administer the same. This had been the case of his august father-in-law all his evil life.
"Would you like to walk down by the river?" she said now, and looked up into his face. She had been silent while he was so deeply engrossed in thought, and upon hearing her voice he started abruptly.
"What—why—what's the matter?" she inquired anxiously.
"Nothing," he said quickly, coloring guiltily. "I was just thinking."
"Of what?" she asked artfully.
"Of you," he said evasively.