very airy, empty shed; but even this is an improvement, for usually the
school is held in the church. The churches vary from log-huts to those
like Shepherd's, and the schools from nothing to this little house that
sits demurely on the county line. It is a tiny plank-house, perhaps
ten by twenty, and has within a double row of rough unplaned benches,
resting mostly on legs, sometimes on boxes. Opposite the door is a
square home-made desk. In one corner are the ruins of a stove, and in
the other a dim blackboard. It is the cheerfulest schoolhouse I have
seen in Dougherty, save in town. Back of the schoolhouse is a
lodgehouse two stories high and not quite finished. Societies meet
there,--societies "to care for the sick and bury the dead"; and these
societies grow and flourish.

We had come to the boundaries of Dougherty, and were about to turn west
along the county-line, when all these sights were pointed out to us by
a kindly old man, black, white-haired, and seventy. Forty-five years
he had lived here, and now supports himself and his old wife by the
help of the steer tethered yonder and the charity of his black
neighbors. He shows us the farm of the Hills just across the county
line in Baker,--a widow and two strapping sons, who raised ten bales
(one need not add "cotton" down here) last year. There are fences and
pigs and cows, and the soft-voiced, velvet-skinned young Memnon, who
sauntered half-bashfully over to greet the strangers, is proud of his
home. We turn now to the west along the county line. Great dismantled
trunks of pines tower above the green cottonfields, cracking their
naked gnarled fingers toward the border of living forest beyond. There
is little beauty in this region, only a sort of crude abandon that
suggests power,--a naked grandeur, as it were. The houses are bare and
straight; there are no hammocks or easy-chairs, and few flowers. So
when, as here at Rawdon's, one sees a vine clinging to a little porch,
and home-like windows peeping over the fences, one takes a long breath.
I think I never before quite realized the place of the Fence in
civilization. This is the Land of the Unfenced, where crouch on either
hand scores of ugly one-room cabins, cheerless and dirty. Here lies
the Negro problem in its naked dirt and penury. And here are no
fences. But now and then the crisscross rails or straight palings
break into view, and then we know a touch of culture is near. Of
course Har