site? Huh!
Listen here to me: They're so dad-gum opposite they're plum'
cater-cornered!"

CHAPTER III

A SHORT NATURAL HISTORY

If ever a person might be said to have dedicated his being to the
pursuit of leisure, that selfsame was Red Hoss Shackleford, of color,
and highly so. He was one who specialized in the deft and fine high art
of doing nothing at all. With him leisure was at once a calling to be
followed regularly and an ideal to be fostered. But also he loved to
eat, and he had a fancy for wearing gladsome gearings, and these
cravings occasionally interfered with the practice of his favorite
vocation. In order that he might enjoy long periods of manual inactivity
it devolved upon him at intervals to devote his reluctant energies to
gainful labor. When driven to it by necessity, which is said to be the
mother of invention and which certainly is the full sister to appetite,
Red Hoss worked. He just naturally had to--sometimes.

You see, in the matter of being maintained vicariously he was less
fortunately circumstanced than so many of his fellows in our town were,
and still are. He had no ministering parent doing cookery for the white
folks, and by night, in accordance with a time-hallowed custom with
which no sane housekeeper dared meddle, bringing home under a dolman
cape loaded tin buckets and filled wicker baskets. Ginger Dismukes,
now--to cite a conspicuous example--was one thus favored by the
indulgent fates.

Aunt Ca'line Dismukes, mother of the above, was as honest as the day was
long; but when the evening of that day came, such trifles, say, as part
of a ham or a few left-over slices of cake fell to her as a legitimate
if unadvertised salvage. Every time the quality in the big house had
white meat for their dinner, Ginger, down the alley, enjoyed drumsticks
and warmed-up stuffing for his late supper. He might be like the
tapeworm in that he rarely knew in advance what he would have to eat,
but still, like the tapeworm, he gratefully absorbed what was put before
him and asked no questions of the benefactor. Without prior effort on
his part he was fed even as the Prophet Elijah was fed by the ravens of
old. This simile would acquire added strength if you'd ever seen Aunt
Ca'line, her complexion being a crow's-wing sable.

Red Hoss had no dependable helpmate, such as Luther Maydew had, with a
neatly lettered sign in her front window: GOING-OUT WASHING TAKEN IN
HERE. Luther's wife was Luther's