their quota
of woe. Then I fell to wondering how people could like to sing mournful
things and make themselves and other people miserable; and that made me
think of what negroes liked, and that naturally led to watermelons; so I
dried my eyes and summoned my maid: "Betty, what is it they are singing
about? Is anybody dead?"

"It's de las' en' of a funerul, I b'lieve, m'm--somebody whar dey didn't
git done preachin' over him, 'count of a storm."

"Betty, the singing does make me feel so badly. Just step over and say I
will send them a barrel of watermelons and cantaloupes, and those Mrs.
Brown sent me too, if they will get up a dance or make any kind of
cheerful noise. There is a tambourine among the children's toys: you can
beat it as you go."

Betty laughed, and went over. There was a pause in the singing: then I
heard a man's voice: "Go 'way wid dat fool talk! Whar she gwine git
watermillions an' mushmillions by de bar'l, an' dey ain't more'n fa'rly
ripe?"

"Mr. Smith sent 'em from de city," simpered Betty, who liked to put on
airs with the country-folk; "an' Mrs. Brown, of your nabority, reposed
her some to-day."

"Dat's so 'bout dem from town, 'cos I helped to tote 'em up to de
house," said another.

"Huk kum she ain't et 'em?"

"The baby conwulshed, an' Mrs. Smith's mind disbegaged of de melons,"
replied Betty.

"Huk kum he sen' so many?" asked the first speaker, who appeared to be
business-manager, and duly afraid of being swindled--fervid in fair
speech, and correspondingly suspicious. "His wife mus' be a mons'ous
hearty 'ooman!"

"He knowed she were goin' to resperse 'em to her village fren's too, of
course. Which we all know dere ain't no place where you carn't" (Betty
was from Cumberland county, and pronounced the _a_ broad, to the envious
disgust of the Rockbridge darkies) "git fruit like you carn't git it in
the country. It is always five miles off, an' de han's is busy, or de
creek is riz an' you carn't cross it."

"Come now, town-nigger, we don't want none o' yo' slack-jaw; an' ain't
gwine take it, nudder!"

"Mos' incertny not," sang out a high-pitched female voice from some
unseen point.

"Comin' here wid yo' half-white talk an' half-nigger!"

"But who'll git up de fus' larf?" inquired the metropolitan, suavely
waiving personal discussion.

"Yo' git de 'millions, an' de laf's boun' ter foller. Don't be skeered
'bout de laf."

And his veracity proved unimpeachable, for as the melons w