nally four corners, but today it
is certainly a circle with a big open space in the center, and in the
very middle of that stands a flag staff upon which floats the stars and
stripes. The whole open space is covered with the softest green turf.
_Not_ a lawn, mind you, such as one may see in almost any immaculately
kept northern town, with artistic flower beds dotting it, and a carefully
trimmed border of foliage plants surrounding it. No, this circle has real
Virginia turf; the thick, rich, indestructible turf one finds in England,
which, as an old gardener told the writer, "we rolls and tills it for a
thousand years." Nature had been rolling and tilling this green plot of
ground for a good many thousand years.

The circle was encompassed by an iron rail fence to which the people from
the surrounding community hitched their saddle or carriage horses when
they came to the "Store" for their mail, or to make various purchases.
And there the beasties often stood for hours, rubbing noses and
exchanging the gossip of the paddocks, horse (or mule) fashion.

There were always several hitched there, and they were always gossiping
or dozing as they waited for their owners to start toward home, and they
represented all sorts and conditions of their kind just as those owners
represented all sorts and conditions of men. Some were young men, some
middle-aged, some old. Some were of the gentry of the surrounding
country, some the humbler white folk, some the negroes who had managed to
acquire small tracts of land which they farmed successfully or otherwise.
Among them, too, was the typical shiftless, "triflin' no-'count" darkey
who "jist sits 'round a-waitin'," though it would be hard for him to tell
what he was waiting for.

Nevertheless, the "Corners" is the center of the activities of that
community, though to make those who most frequently gather there,
comprehend the limitations of its activities they would have to be set
down in the midst of some big, hustling city.

Still, some who go to the Corners are very much alive to this fact, for
they have journeyed throughout the length and breadth of their own land
and many other lands beside. But they do not tell their less travelled
brothers much of the wonders which lie beyond the towering mountains,
which is just as well, perhaps. The stay-at-home might be less happy and
content were they to learn of the doings of the big world beyond the
barriers of their snug, peaceful valley,