Having treated of the planting of strawberries, their cultivation, and kindred topics, in that great northern belt, of which a line drawn through New York city may be regarded as the centre, I shall now suggest characteristics in the culture of this fruit in southern latitudes. We need not refer to the oldest inhabitant, since the middle-aged remember when even the large cities of the North were supplied from the fields in the suburbs, and the strawberry season in town was identical with that of the surrounding country. But a marvellous change has taken place, and berries from southern climes appear in our markets soon after midwinter. This early supply is becoming one of the chief industries of the South Atlantic coast, and every year increases its magnitude. At one time, southern New Jersey furnished the first berries, but Maryland, Delaware, and Virginia soon began to compete. Norfolk early took the lead in this trade, and even before the war was building up a fine business. That event cut off our Southern supply, and for a few years June and strawberries again came together. But after the welcome peace, many Southern fields grew red once more, but not with blood, and thronged, but chiefly by women and children. Soil, climate, and superb water communications speedily restored to Norfolk the vantage which she will probably maintain; but fleet steamers are giving more southern ports a chance. Charleston, South Carolina, is second only in importance. In the spring of '79, every week four steamers were loaded for New York, and strawberries formed no insignificant proportion of the freight. Indeed, the supply from Charleston was so large that the price in April scarcely repaid the cost of some shipments. The proprietor of a commission house, largely engaged in the Southern fruit trade, told me he thought that about one third as many strawberries came from Charleston as from Norfolk. From careful inquiries made on the ground, I am led to believe—if it has not already attained this position—that Norfolk is rapidly becoming the largest strawberry centre in the world, though Charleston is unquestionably destined to become its chief rival in the South. The latter city, however, has not been able to monopolize the far Southern trade, and never have I seen a finer field of strawberries than was shown me in the suburbs of Savannah. It consisted of a square of four acres, set with Neunan's Prolific, the celebrated Charleston berry.

And now Florida, with its unrivalled oranges, is beginning to furnish tons of strawberries, that begin ripening in our midwinter; and, with its quick, sandy soil and sunny skies, threatens to render the growing of this fruit under glass unprofitable. I saw last winter, at Mandarin, quite an extensive strawberry farm, under the care of Messrs. Bowen Brothers, and was shown their skilful appliances for shipping the fruit. At Jacksonville, also, Captain William James is succeeding finely in the culture of some of our Northern varieties, the Seth Boyden taking the lead.

I think I can better present the characteristics of strawberry culture in the South by aiming to give a graphic picture of the scenes and life on a single farm than is possible by general statements of what I have witnessed here and there. I have therefore selected for description a plantation at Norfolk, since this city is the centre of the largest trade, and nearly midway in the Atlantic strawberry belt, I am also led to make this choice because here is to be found, I believe, the largest strawberry farm in the world, and its varied labors illustrate most of the Southern aspects of the question.

The reader may imagine himself joining our little party on a lovely afternoon about the middle of May. We took one of the fine, stanch steamers of the Old Dominion line at three P.M., and soon were enjoying, with a pleasure that never palls, the sail from the city to the sea. Our artistic leader, whose eye and taste were to illumine and cast a glamour over my otherwise matter-of-fact text, was all aglow with the varied beauties of the scene, and he faced the prospect beyond the "Hook" with no more misgivings than if it were a "painted ocean." But there are occasions when the most heroic courage is of no avail.

Only in the peace and beauty that crowned the closing hours of the day as we steamed past Fortress Monroe and up the Elizabeth river, did the prosaic fade out of the hours just past, and now before us was the "sunny South" and strawberries and cream.

In the night there was a steady downfall of rain, but sunshine came with the morning, and we found that the spring we had left at the North was summer here, and saw that the season was moving forward with quickened and elastic tread. Before the day grew warm we started from our hotel at Norfolk for the strawberry plantation, rattling and bouncing past comfortable and substantial homes, over a pavement that surpassed even the ups and downs of fortune. Here and there, surrounded by a high brick wall, would be seen a fine old mansion, embowered in a wealth of shrubbery and foliage that gave, even in the midst of the city, a suburban seclusion. The honeysuckle and roses are at home in Norfolk, and their exquisite perfume floated to us across the high garden fences. Thank Heaven! some of the best things in the world cannot be walled in. St. Paul's Church and quaint old burying- ground, shadowed by trees, festooned with vines, and gemmed with flowers, seemed so beautiful, as we passed, that we thought its influence on the secular material life of the people must be almost as good through the busy week as on the Sabbath.

The houses soon grew scattering, and the wide, level, open country stretched away before us, its monotony broken here and there by groves of pine. The shell road ceased and our wheels now passed through many deep puddles, which in Virginia seem sacred, since they are preserved year after year in exactly the same places. A more varied class of vehicles than we met from time to time would scarcely be seen on any other road in the country. There were stylish city carriages and buggies, grocer and express wagons, great lumbering market trucks laden with barrels of early cabbages, spring wagons, drawn by mules, piled up with crates from many a strawberry field in the interior, and so, on the descending scale, till we reach the two-wheeled, primitive carts drawn by cows—all converging toward some Northern steamer, whose capacious maw was ready to receive the produce of the country. We had not proceeded very far before we saw in the distance a pretty cottage, sheltered by a group of tall, primeval pines, and on the right of it a large barn-like building, with a dwelling, office, smithy, sheds, etc., grouped about it. A previous visit enabled me to point out the cottage as the home of the proprietor, and to explain that the seeming barn was a strawberry crate manufactory. As was the case on large plantations in the olden time, almost everything required in the business is made on the place, and nearly every mechanical trade has a representative in Mr. Young's employ.

As we drove up under the pines, the proprietor of the farm welcomed us with a cordial hospitality, which he may have acquired in part from his residence in the South. On the porch stood a slender lady, whose girlish grace and delicate beauty at once captivated the artists of our party.

There was the farm we had come to see, stretching away before us in hundreds of green, level acres. As we drove to a distant field in which the pickers were then engaged, we could see the ripening berries with one side blushing toward the sun. Passing a screen of pines, we came out into a field containing thirteen acres of Wilson strawberries, and then more fully began to realize the magnitude of the business. Scattered over the wide area, in what seemed inextricable confusion to our uninitiated eyes, were hundreds of men, women, and children of all ages and shades of color, and from the field at large came a softened din of voices, above the monotony of which arose here and there snatches of song, laughter mellowed by distance, and occasionally the loud, sharp orders of the overseers, who stalked hither and thither, wherever their "little brief authority" was most in requisition.

We soon noted that the confusion was more apparent than real, and that each picker was given a row over which he—or, more often, she—bent with busy fingers until it was finished. At central points crates were piled up, and men known as "buyers" received the round quart baskets from the trays of the pickers, while wide platform carts, drawn by mules, were bringing empty crates and carrying away those that had been filled.

Along the road that skirted the field, and against a pretty background of half-grown pines, motley forms and groups were moving to and fro, some seeking the "buyers" with full trays, others returning to their stations in the field with a new supply of empty baskets. Some of the pickers were drifting away to other fields, a few seeking work late in the day; more, bargaining with the itinerant venders of pies, made to last all summer if not sold, gingerbread, "pones," and other nondescript edibles, at which an ostrich would hesitate in well- grounded fear of indigestion, but for which sable and semi-sable pickers exchange their berry tickets and pennies as eagerly as we buy Vienna rolls. Two or three barouches and buggies that had brought visitors were mingled with the mule-carts; and grouped together for a moment might be seen elegantly attired ladies from New York, slender mulatto girls, clad in a single tattered, gown which scantily covered their bare ankles and feet, and stout, shiny negro women, their waists tied with a string to prevent their flowing drapery from impeding their work. Flitting to and fro were numberless colored children, bare-headed, bare-legged, and often, with not a little of their sleek bodies gleaming through the innumerable rents of their garments, their eyes glittering like black beads, and their white teeth showing on the slightest provocation to mirth. Indeed, the majority of the young men and women were chattering and laughing much of the time, and only those well in the shadow of age worked on in a stolid, plodding manner. Mingled indiscriminately with the colored people were not a few white women and children, and occasionally a white man. As a rule, these were better dressed, the white girls wearing sun-bonnets of portentous size, whose cavernous depths would make a search for beauty on the part of our artist a rather close and embarrassing scrutiny. The colored women as often wore a man's hat as any other, and occasionally enlivened the field with a red bandana. Over all the stooping, moving, oddly apparelled forms, a June-like sun was shining with summer warmth. Beyond the field a branch of Tanner's Creek shimmered in the light, tall pines sighed in the breeze on the right, and from the copse-wood at their feet quails were calling, their mellow whistle blending with the notes of a wild Methodist air. In the distance rose the spires of Norfolk, completing a picture whose interest and charm I have but faintly suggested.

Several of the overseers are negroes, and we were hardly on the ground before one of these men, in the performance of his duty, shouted in a stentorian voice:

"Heah, you! Git up dar, you long man, off'n yer knees. What yo' mashin' down a half-acre o' berries fer?"

Mr. Sheppard was quick to see a good subject, and almost in a flash he had the man posed and motionless in his attitude of authority, and under his rapid strokes Jackson won fame and eminence, going to his work a little later the hero of the field. The overseer's task is a difficult one, for the pickers least given to prayer are oftenest on their knees, crushing the strawberries, and whether they are "long" or short, much fruit is destroyed. North and South, the effort to keep those we employ off the berries must be constant, especially as a long, hot day is waning. Indeed, one can scarcely blame them for "lopping down," for it would be inquisitorial torture to most of us to stoop upon our feet through a summer day. Picking strawberries, as a steady business, is wofully prosaic.

While the sun had been shining so brightly there had been an occasional heavy jar and rumble of thunder, and now the western sky was black. Gradually the pickers had disappeared from the Wilson field, and we at last followed them, warned by an occasional drop of rain to seek the vicinity of the house. Having reached the grassy slope beneath the pines in the rear of the dwelling, we turned to note the pretty scene. A branch of Tanner's Creek came up almost to our feet, and on either side of it stretched away long rows of strawberries as far as the eye could reach. Toward these the throng of pickers now drifted, "seeking fresh fields and pastures new." The motley crowd was streaming down on either side of the creek, while across a little causeway came a counter current, the majority of them having trays full of berries. The buyers, like the traders with the nomad Indians, open traffic anywhere, and at the shortest notice. A mule-cart was stopped, a few empty crates taken off and placed under the pines at our feet, and soon the grass was covered with full quart baskets, for which the pickers received tickets and then passed on, or, as was often the case, threw themselves down in the shade. The itinerant venders came flocking in like so many buzzards. There was at once chaffering and chaffing, eating and drinking. All were merry. Looking on the groups before us, one would imagine that the sky was serene. And yet, frowning upon this scene of careless security, this improvident disregard of a swiftly coming emergency, was one of the blackest of clouds. Every moment the thunder was jarring and rolling nearer, and yet this jolly people, who "take no thought," heeded not the warning. Even the buyers and packers seemed infected with a like spirit, and were leisurely packing in crates the baskets of berries scattered on the grass, when suddenly Mr. Young, with his fleet, black horse, came flying down upon us. Standing up in his buggy, he gave a dozen rapid orders, like an officer on the field in a critical moment. The women, who had been lounging with their hands on their hips, shuffled off with their trays; half-burned pipes are hastily emptied; gingerbread and like delicacies are stuffed into capacious mouths, since hands must be employed at once. Packers, mules, everybody, everything, are put upon the double-quick to prepare for the shower. It is too late, however, for down come the huge drops as they can fall only in the South. The landscape grows obscure, the forms of the pickers in the distance become dim and misty, and when at last it lightens up a little, they have disappeared from the fields. There they go, streaming and dripping toward the barns and sheds, looking as bedraggled as a flock of black Spanish fowls. Such of the mule-drivers as have been caught, now that they are in for it, drive leisurely by with the heavy crates that they should have gathered up more promptly.

The cloud did not prove a passing one, and the rain fell so long and copiously that further picking for the day was abandoned. Some jogged off to the city, at a pace that nothing but a fiery storm could have quickened. A hundred or two remained under the sheds, singing and laughing. Men and women, and many bright young negro girls, too, lighted their pipes and waited till they could gather at the "paying booth," near the entrance of the farm, after the rain was over. This booth was a small shop, extemporized of rough boards by an enterprising grocer of the city. One side was open, like the counter of a restaurant, and within, upon the grass, as yet untrodden, were barrels and boxes containing the edible enormities which seem indigenous to the semi-grocery and eating-house. In most respects the place resembled the sutler's stand of our army days. There was a small window on one end of the booth, and at this sat the grocer, metamorphosed into a paymaster, with a huge bag of coin, which he rapidly exchanged for the strawberry tickets. Our last glimpse of the pickers, who had streamed out of the city in the gray dawn, left them in a long line, close as herrings in a box, pressing toward the window, from which came faintly the chink of silver.

As night at last closed about us, we realized the difference between a strawberry farm and a strawberry bed, or "patch," as country people say. Here was a large and well-developed business, which proved the presence of no small degree of brain power and energy; and our thoughts naturally turned to the proprietor and the methods by which he achieved success.

J. E. Young, Jr., is a veteran in strawberry culture, although but twenty-nine years of age. Mr. Young, Sr., was a Presbyterian clergyman who always had a leaning toward man's primal calling. When his son was a little boy, he was preaching at Plattsburgh, New York, and to his labors in the spiritual vineyard joined the care of a garden that was the pride of the town. Mr. Young, Jr., admits that he hated weeding and working among strawberries as much as any other boy, until he was given a share in the crop, and permitted to send a few crates to Montreal. He had seen but nine years when he shipped his first berries to market, and every summer since, from several widely separated localities and with many and varied experiences, he has sent to Northern cities increasing quantities of his favorite fruit. When but fifteen years of age he had the entire charge, during the long season, of three hundred "hands," and the large majority of them were Irish women and children. After considerable experience in strawberry farming in northern and southern New York and in New Jersey, his father induced him to settle at Norfolk, Virginia, and hither he came about ten years ago. Now he has under his control a farm of 440 acres, 150 of which are to-day covered with bearing strawberry plants. In addition, he has set out this spring over two million more plants, which will occupy another hundred acres, so that in 1880 he will have 250 acres that must be picked over almost daily.

Mr. Young prefers spring planting in operations upon a large scale. Such a choice is very natural in this latitude, for they can begin setting the first of February and continue until the middle of April. Therefore, nine-tenths of the plants grown in this region are set out in spring. But at Charleston and further south, they reverse this practice, and, with few exceptions, plant in the summer and fall, beginning as early as July on some places, and continuing well into December.

I must also state that the finest new plantation that I saw on Mr.
Young's place was a field of Seth Boydens set out in September.

This fact proves that he could follow the system of autumn planting successfully, and I am inclined to think that he will regard this method with constantly increasing favor. As an instance proving the adaptation to this latitude of the fall system of planting, I may state that 96,000 plants were sent to a gentleman at Richmond, in October, 1877, and when I visited his place, the following spring, there was scarcely a break in the long rows, and nearly fruit enough, I think, to pay for the plants. From his Seth Boydens, set out last September, Mr. Young will certainly pick enough berries to pay expenses thus far; and at the same time, the plants are already four times the size of any set out this spring. As the country about Norfolk is level, with spots where the water would stand in very wet weather, Mr. Young has it thrown up into slightly raised beds two and a half feet wide. This is done by plows, after the ground has been thoroughly prepared and levelled by a heavy, fine-toothed harrow. These ridges are but four or five inches high, and are smoothed off by an implement made for the purpose. Upon these beds, quite near the edges, the plants are set in rows twenty inches apart, while the depressed space between the beds is twenty-seven inches wide. This space is also designed for the paths. The rows and the proper distances for the plants are designated by a "marker," an implement consisting of several wheels fastened to a frame and drawn by hand. On the rim of these wheels are two knobs shaped like an acorn. Each wheel marks a continuous line on the soft earth, and with each revolution the knobs make two slight but distinct depressions twelve inches apart; or, if the variety to be planted is a vigorous grower, he uses another set of wheels that indent the ground every fifteen inches. A plant is dropped at each indentation, and a gang of colored women follow with trowels, and by two or three quick, dexterous movements, imbed the roots firmly in the soil. Some become so quick and skilful as to be able to set out six or seven thousand a day, while four or five thousand is the average. With his trained band of twenty women, Mr. Young calls the setting of a hundred thousand plants a good day's work.

In April commences the long campaign against the weeds, which advance like successive armies. No sooner is one growth slain than a different and perhaps more pestiferous class rises in its place—the worst of the Philistines being nut-grass, quack-grass, and—direst foe of all— wire-grass.

This labor is reduced to its minimum by mule cultivation, and Mr. Young has on his farm a style of cultivator that is peculiarly adapted to the work. As this is his own invention, I will not describe it, but merely state that it enables him to work very close to the rows, and to stir the soil deeply without moving it or covering the plants. These cultivators are followed by women, with light, sharp hoes, who cut away the few weeds left between the plants. They handle these tools so deftly that scarcely any weeding is left to be done by hand; for, by a rapid encircling stroke, they cut within a half-inch of the plant. For several years past, I have urged upon Mr. Young the advantage of the narrow row system, and his own experience has led him to adopt it. He is now able to keep his immense farm free of weeds chiefly by mule labor, whereas, in his old system of matted row culture it was impossible to keep down the grass, or prevent the ground from becoming hard and dry. He now restricts his plants to hills or "stools," from twelve to fifteen inches apart. The runners are cut from time to time with shoe-knives, the left hand gathering them up by a single rapid movement, and the right hand severing them by a stroke. One woman will, by this method, clip the runners from several acres during the growing season. To keep his farm in order, Mr. Young must employ seventy-five hands through the summer. The average wages for women is fifty cents, and for men seventy-five to ninety cents. In the item of cheap labor the South has the advantage of the North.

With the advent of autumn, the onslaught of weeds gradually ceases, and there is some respite in the labors of a Virginia strawberry farm.

At Charleston and further south, this respite is brief, for the winters there are so mild that certain kinds of weeds will grow all the time, and early in February they must begin to cultivate the ground and mulch the plants for bearing.

Bordering on Mr. Young's farm, and further up the creek, there are hundreds of acres of salt meadows. From these he has cut, in the autumn and early winter, two hundred tons of hay, and with his lighter floats it down to his wharf. In December, acre after acre is covered until all the plants are quite hidden from view. In the spring, this winter mulch is left upon the ground as the summer mulch, the new growth in most instances pushing its way through it readily. When it is too thick to permit this, it is pushed aside from the crowns of the plants.

Thus far he has given the bearing fields no spring culture, adopting the common theory that the ground around the plants must not be disturbed at this season. I advocate the opposite view, and believe in early spring culture, as I have already explained; and I think his experience this year will lead him to give my method a trial in 1880. The latter part of April and early May was very dry at Norfolk, and the ground between the bearing plants became parched, hard, and in many instances full of weeds that had been developing through the long, mild spring of this region. Now I am satisfied that if he, and all others in this region who adopt the narrow row system, would loosen the ground deeply with a subsoil plow early in the season, before the plants had made any growth, and then stir and pulverize all the surface between the plants in the rows, they would increase the size and quantity of the berries at least one-third, and in many instances double the crop. It would require a very severe drought, indeed, to injure plants thus treated, and it is well known, also, that a porous, mellow soil will best endure too frequent rains. I have sometimes thought that light and air are as indispensable to the roots of plants as to the foliage.

The winter mulch need not prevent this spring culture. Let the men begin on one side of a field, and rake inward until half a dozen rows are uncovered. Down through these the subsoil plow and the cultivator can pass. Then the hay can be raked back again as the summer mulch, and a new space cleared, until the whole field is cultivated and the mulch left as it was before.

Now, however, it is not a surface like hard-pan that is covered, but a mellow soil in which the roots can luxuriate.

Mr. Young uses fertilizers, especially those containing ammonia, only to a limited extent, believing that while they undoubtedly increase the size of the fruit, they also render it soft and unfit for long carriage, and promote an undue growth of vine. This theory is true, to a certain extent, but I think the compensating benefits of fertilizers of almost any kind far outweigh the disadvantages. At his distance from the market, firmness in the berry is essential, but I think he will find this quality is dependent more upon the weather and the variety than upon the fertilizer. Of course, over-stimulation by hot manures will always produce an unwholesome, perishable growth, but a good coat of well-rotted compost scattered down the rows, just before they receive their fall or spring culture, would be exceedingly beneficial in nine cases out of ten. I most heartily agree with him, however, that all fertilizers containing potash are peculiarly adapted to the strawberry.

Having considered his methods of planting and culture, we now return again to the culminating period in which the hopes and labors of the year are rewarded or disappointed. When we awoke the morning following our arrival, we found the landscape obscured by a dense fog. Through this, in dim, uncertain outline, throngs of pickers were streaming out from the city to Mr. Young's place and the strawberry farms beyond. The broad fields seemed all the more vast from the obscurity, and the stooping forms of the fruit-gatherers took on odd and fantastic shapes in the silvery mist.

But while we drank our coffee the sun sipped these morning vapors, and when we stepped out under the pines, the day was hourly growing brighter and warmer. The balmy, fragrant air, the meadow larks singing in the distance, the cheery voices of the pickers in an adjacent field, would tempt gloom itself to forget its care and stroll away through the sunlight. The pickers were beginning to take possession of a field containing thirty acres of Triomphe de Gands, and we followed them, and there lighted on one of the oddest characters on the plantation—"Sam Jubilee," the "row-man," black as night, short, stout, and profane. It is Sam's business to give each picker a row of berries, and he carries a brass-headed cane as the baton of authority. As we came up, he was whirling a glazed hat of portentous size in one hand and gesticulating so wildly with his cane that one might think he was in convulsions of rage, but we soon learned that this was "his way."

"Heah, you, dah!" he vociferated, to the slouching, leisurely pickers that were drifting after him, "what's de matter wid yer j'ints? Step along lively, or by—" and then came a volley of the most outlandish oaths ever uttered by a human tongue.

"Don't swear so, Sam," said Mr. Young.

"Can't help it, sah. Dey makes me swar. Feels as if I could bust inter ten thousand emptins, dey's so agerwatin. Heah, my sister, take dat row. You, gemlin" (to a white man), "take dat. Heah, chile, step in dar an' pick right smart, or I'll warm yer!"

Sam "brothers and sisters" the motley crowd he domineers like a colored preacher, but I fear he is not "in good and regular standing" in any church in Norfolk.

"He can give out rows more rapidly and systematically than any man I ever had," said Mr. Young; and we soon observed that wherever Jubilee led, with his stentorian voice and emphatic gestures, there was life and movement. Thus we learned that although there might be 1,500 people in the fields, there was no haphazard picking. Each one would be assigned a row, which could not be left until all the ripe berries on it were gathered.

Passing to and fro across the fields are the two chief overseers of the farm, Harrison and Peters, both apparently full-blooded negroes, but in the vernacular of the South, "right smart men." They have been with Mr. Young eight or ten years, and were promoted and maintain their position solely on the ground of ability and faithfulness. They go rapidly from one to another, noting whether they are picking the rows clean. They also take from each tray a basket at random, and empty it into another, thus discovering who are gathering green or imperfect berries. If the fruit falls much below the accepted standard, the baskets are confiscated and no tickets given for them, and if the picker continues careless he is sent out of the field.

Mr. Young says that he has never found any white overseers who could equal these men; and through the long year they drive on the work with tireless energy.

Indeed, Peters often has much ado to keep his energy under control. A powerful engine cannot always be safe, and Peters slipped his bands one day to his cost. A woman would not obey him, and he threatened her with a pistol. Instead of obeying, she started to run. He fired and wounded her twice, and then tried to get off on the lame excuse that he did not know the pistol was loaded. The trouble was that he was overloaded. But his offence resulted more from these characteristics than from innate ugliness of temper. To make the business of the huge farm go has become his controlling passion; and he chafes at an obstacle like an obstructed torrent.

Harrison, his associate overseer, unites more discretion with his force, and he gave us an example of this fact. As we were strolling about, we found, seated at the end of the strawberry rows, a group consisting of two young women and two children, with a colored man standing near. They had been picking in partnership, we were informed by one of the young women, who was smoking a pipe, and who replied to our questions, scarcely taking the trouble to look up. She was about half white, and her face was singularly expressive of sensuousness and indolent recklessness.

"This man is your husband?" I suggested.

"No, he's only my brudder. My ole man is pickin' on anoder farm," she drawled out, between the whiffs of her pipe.

"I should think you and your husband would work together," I ventured.

"We doesn't. He goes about his business and I goes about mine," she remarked, with languid complacency.

Here is a character, I thought, as we passed on—the very embodiment of a certain kind of wilfulness. She would not resist or chafe at authority, but, with an easy, good-natured, don't-care expression, would do as she pleased, "though the heavens fell." A little later there was a heavy rumble of thunder in the west, and we met again the young woman whose marital relations resembled those of many of her fashionable sisters at the North. She was leading her small band from the field. The prospective shower was her excuse for going, but laziness the undoubted cause. Harrison, like a vigilant watch-dog, spied them and blustered up, never for a moment doubting that she would yield to his authority.

But he had met his match. She merely looked at him with her slow, quiet, indolent smile, in which there was not the faintest trace of irresolution or fear, and he knew that the moment he stepped out of the way, she would pass on. His loud expostulations and threats soon ceased. What could he do with that laughing woman, who no doubt had been a slave, but was now emancipated a trifle too completely? He might as well try to stop a sluggish tide with his hands. It would ooze away from him inevitably. The instincts of this people are quick. Harrison knew he was defeated, and his only anxiety now was to retreat in a way that would save appearances.

"I'se a-gwine home, M's'r Harrison," she said quietly. "You don't catch us gittin' wet ag'in."

"Oh, well, if you is 'fraid ob gittin' wet, s'pose I'll habe to let you off jus' dis once," he began, pompously; and here, fortunately, he saw a man leaving the field in the distance. There was a subject with which he could deal, and a line of retreat open at the same time; and away he went, therefore, vociferating all the more loudly that he might cover his discomfiture. The woman smiled a little more complacently and went on, with her old easy, don't-care swing, as she undoubtedly will, whithersoever her inclinations lead, to the end of her life. To crystallize such wayward, human atoms into proper forms, and make them useful, is a problem that would puzzle wiser heads than that of the overseer.

I think, however, that not only Harrison and Peters, but all who have charge of working people, rely too much on driving, and too little on encouraging and coaxing. An incident which occurred may illustrate this truth. My companion, Mr. Drake, soon mastered one of the labors of a strawberry farm—the gathering of the fruit—and out of the plenitude of his benevolence essayed to teach a little sable how he could pick to better advantage.

"Put your basket down, sonny," he said. "Now you have two hands to work with instead of one—so, don't you see?"

"Dat's mighty good in you, Mas'r," said a woman near. "Lor bress you! de people 'ud jess jump over derselves tryin' to do the work if dey got sich good words, but de oberseer's so cross dat we gits 'umptuous and don't keer."

Still, to the majority, the strawberry season brings the halcyon days of the year. They look forward to it and enjoy it as a prolonged picnic, in which business and pleasure are equally combined. They are essentially gregarious, and this industry brings many together during the long bright days. The light work leaves their tongues free, and families and neighbors pick together with a ceaseless chatter, a running fire of rude, broad pleasantry, intermingled occasionally with a windy war of words in a jargon that becomes all the more uncouth from anger, but which rarely ends in blows.

We were continually impressed by their courage, buoyancy, animal spirits, or whatever it is that enables them to face their uncertain future so unconcernedly. Multitudes live like the birds, not knowing where their next year's nest will be, or how to-morrow's food will come. It has come, thus far, and this fact seems enough. In many instances, however, their humble fortunes are built on the very best foundations.

"What can you do after the berry season is over?" we asked a woman who had but one arm.

"I kin do what any other woman kin do," she said, straightening herself up. "I kin bake, cook, wash, iron, scrub—"

"That will do," I cried. "You are better off than most of us, for the world will always need and pay for your accomplishments."

The story of her life was a simple one. She did not remember when she lost her arm, but only knew that it had been burned off. When scarcely more than an infant, she had been left alone in the little cabin by the slave mother, who probably was toiling in the tobacco field. There was a fire on the hearth—the rest can be imagined only too vividly. She is fighting out the battle of life, however, more successfully with her one hand than are multitudes of men with two. She is stout and cheery, and can "take keer of herself and children," she said.

Scattered here and there over the fields might be seen two heads that would keep in rather close juxtaposition up and down the long rows.

"Dey's pairin' off," was the explanation.

"You keep de tickets," said a buxom young woman to her mate, as he was about to take her tray, as well as his own, to the buyers.

"You are in partnership," I remarked.

"Yes, we is," she replied, with a conscious laugh.

"You are related, I suppose?"

"Well, not 'zackly—dat is—we's partners."

"How about this partnership business—does it not last sometimes after the strawberry season is over?"

"Oh, Lor' yes! Heaps on 'em gits fallen in love; den dey gits a- marryin' arter de pickin' time is done gone by."

"Now I see what your partnership means."

"Yah, yah, yah! You sees a heap more dan I's told you!" But her partner grinned most approvingly. We were afterward informed that there was no end to the love-making among the strawberry rows.

There are from fifty to one hundred and fifty pickers in a squad, and these are in charge of subordinate overseers, who are continually moving around among them, on the watch for delinquencies of all kinds. Some of these minor potentates are white and some black. As a rule, Mr. Young gives the blacks the preference and on strictly business principles, too. "The colored men have more snap, and can get more work out of their own people," he says. By means of these sub- overseers, large numbers can be transferred from one part of the farm to another without confusion.

Fortunes are never made in gathering strawberries, and yet there seems no dearth of pickers. The multitude of men, women, and children that streams out into the country every morning is surprisingly large. Five or six thousand bushels a day are often gathered in the vicinity of Norfolk, and the pickers rarely average over a bushel each. "Right smart hands," who have the good hap to be given full rows, will occasionally pick two bushels; but about thirty quarts per day is the usual amount, while not a few of the lazy and feeble bring in only eight or ten.

As has been already suggested, the pickers are followed by the buyers and packers, and to these men, at central points in the fields, the mule-carts bring empty crates. The pickers carry little trays containing six baskets, each holding a quart. As fast as they fill these, they flock in to the buyers. If a trayful, or six good quarts, are offered, the buyer gives the picker a yellow ticket, worth twelve cents. When less than six baskets are brought, each basket is paid for with a green ticket, worth two cents. These two tickets are eventually exchanged for a white fifty-cent ticket, which is cashed at the paying-booth after the day's work is over. The pickers, therefore, receive two cents for every quart of good, salable berries. If green, muddy, or decayed berries are brought in, they are thrown away or confiscated, and incorrigibly careless pickers are driven off the place. Every morning the buyers take out as many tickets of these three values as they think they can use, and are charged with the same by the book-keeper. Their voucher for all they pay out is another ticket, on which is printed "forty-five quarts," or just a crateful. Only Mr. Young and one other person have a right to give out the last- named tickets, and by night each buyer must have enough of them to balance the other tickets with which he was charged in the morning. Thus thousands of dollars change hands through the medium of four kinds of tickets not over an inch, square, and by means of them the financial part of gathering the crop is managed.

In previous years these tickets were received the same as money by any of the shops in the city, and on one occasion were counterfeited. Mr. Young now has his own printing-office, and gets them up in a way not easily imitated, nor does he issue them until just as the fruit begins to ripen. He has, moreover, given authority to one man only to cash these tickets. Thus there is little chance for rascality.

He also requires that no ticket shall be cashed until the fields have all been picked over. Were it not for this regulation, the lazy and the "bummers" would earn enough merely to buy a few drinks, then slink off. Now they must remain until all are through before they can get a cent. Peters and Harrison see to it that none are lying around in the shade, and thus, through the compulsion of system, many, no doubt, are surprised to find themselves at work for the greater part of the day.

And yet neither system nor Peters, with even his sanguinary reputation, is able alone to control the hordes employed. Of course the very dregs of the population are largely represented. Many go out on a "lark," not a few to steal, and some with the basest purposes. Walking continually back and forth through the fields, therefore, are two duly authorized constables and their presence only prevents a great deal of crime. Moreover, according to Virginian law, every landholder has the right to arrest thieves and trespassers. Up to the time of our visit, five persons had been arrested, and the fact that they were all white does not speak very well for our color. The law of the state requires that they shall be punished by so many lashes, according to the gravity of the offence, and by imprisonment. The whipping-post is one of the institutions, and man or woman, white or black, against whom the crime of stealing is proved, is stripped to the waist and lashed upon the bare back. Such ignominious punishment may prevent theft, but it must tend to destroy every vestige of self- respect and pride in criminals, and render them hopelessly reckless. Therefore, it should cease at once.

It must be admitted, however, that very little lawlessness was apparent. In no instance have I received a rude word while travelling in the South, while, on the other hand, the courtesy and kindness were almost unstinted.

The negroes about Norfolk certainly do not wear an intimidated or "bull-dozed" air.

"Git off my row, dar, or I'll bust yo' head open," shouted a tall, strapping colored girl to a white man, and he got off her row with alacrity.

Mr. Young says that the negro laborers are easily managed, and will endure a great deal of severity if you deal "squarely" with them; but if you wrong them out of even five cents, they will never forget it. What's more, every citizen of "Blackville" will be informed of the fact, for what one knows they all seem to know very soon.

We were not long in learning to regard the strawberry farm as a little world within itself. It would be difficult to make the reader understand its life and "go" at certain hours of the day. Scores are coming and going; hundreds dot the fields; carts piled up with crates are moving hither and thither. At the same time the regular toil of cultivation is maintained. Back and forth between the young plants mules are drawing cultivators, and following these come a score or two women with light, sharp hoes. From the great crate manufactory is heard the whir of machinery and the click of hammers; at intervals the smithy sends forth its metallic voice, while from one centre of toil and interest to another the proprietor whisks in his open buggy at a speed that often seems perilous.

After all, Mr. Young's most efficient aid in his business was his father (recently deceased). It gave me pleasure to note the frequency and deference with which the senior's judgment wa& consulted, and I also observed that wherever the old gentleman's umbrella was seen in the field, all went well.

At four or five in the afternoon, the whole area would be picked over. The fields would be left to meadow-larks and quails, whose liquid notes well replaced the songs and cries of the pickers. Here and there a mule-cart would come straggling in. By night, all signs of life were concentrated around the barns and paying booth; but even from these one after another would drift away to the city, till at last scarcely a vestige of the hurry and business of the day would be left. The deep hush and quiet that settled down on the scene was all the more delightful from contrast. To listen to the evening wind among the pines, to watch the sun drop below the spires of Norfolk, and see the long shadows creep toward us; to let our thoughts flit whither they would, like the birds about us, was all the occupation we craved at this hour. Were we younger and more romantic, we might select this witching time for a visit to an ancient grave in one of the strawberry fields.

A mossy, horizontal slab marks the spot, and beneath it reposes the dust of a young English officer. One bright June day—so the legend is told—one hundred and sixteen years ago, this man, in the early summer of his life, was killed in a duel.

Lingering here, through the twilight, until the landscape grows as obscure as this rash youth's history, what fancies some might weave. As the cause of the tragedy, one would scarcely fail to see among the shadows the dim form and features of some old-time belle, whose smiles had kindled the fierce passion that was here quenched, more than a century since. Did she marry the rival, of surer aim and cooler head and heart, or did she haunt this place with regretful tears? Did she become a stout, prosaic woman, and end her days in whist and all the ancient proprieties, or fade into a remorseful wraith that still haunts her unfortunate lover's grave? One shivers, and grows superstitious. The light twinkling from the windows of the cottage under the pines becomes very attractive. As we fall asleep after such a visit, we like to think of the meadow-larks singing on the mossy tombstone in the morning.

Daring a rainy day, when driven from the field, we found plenty to interest us in the printing-office, smithy, and especially in the huge crate manufactory. Here were piled up coils of baskets that suggested strawberries for a million supper-tables. Hour after hour the mule- power engine drove saws, with teeth sharper than those of time, through the pine boards that soon became crates for the round quart baskets. These crates were painted green, marked with Mr. Young's name, and piled to the lofty, cobwebbed ceiling.

But Saturday is the culminating period of the week. The huge plantation has been gone over closely and carefully, for the morrow is Sunday, on which day the birds are the only pickers. Around the office, crate manufactory, and paying booth were gathered over a thousand people—a motley and variegated crowd, that the South only can produce. The odd and often coarse jargon, the infinite variety in appearance and character, suggested again that humanity is a very tangled problem. The shrewdness and accuracy, however, with which the most ignorant count their tickets and reckon their dues on their fingers, is a trait characteristic of all, and, having received the few shillings, which mean a luxurious Sunday, they trudge off to town, chattering volubly, whether any one listens or not.

But many can not resist the rollicking music back of the paying booth. Three sable musicians form the orchestra, and from a bass viol, fiddle and fife they extract melody that, with all its short-coming, would make a deacon wish to dance. Any one, white or black, can purchase the privilege of keeping step to the music for two cents, or one strawberry ticket. Business was superb, and every shade of color and character was represented. In the vernacular of the farm, the mulatto girls are called "strawberry blondes," and one that would have attracted attention anywhere was led out by a droll, full-blooded negro, who would have made the fortune of a minstrel troupe. She was tall and willowy. A profusion of dark hair curled about an oval face, not too dark to prevent a faint color of the strawberry from glowing in her cheeks. She wore neither hat nor shoes, but was as unembarrassed, apparently, in her one close-fitting garment, as could be any ballroom belle dressed in the latest mode. Another blonde, who sported torn slippers and white stockings, was in danger of being spoiled by much attention. As a rule, however, bare feet were nothing against a "lady" in the estimation of the young men. At any rate, all who could spare a berry ticket speedily found a partner, and, as we rode away from the farm, the last sounds were those of music and merriment, and our last glimpse was of the throng of dancers on the green.

The confused uproar and rush of business around the Old Dominion steamship made a marked contrast. To the ample wharves every species of vehicle had been coming all day, while all kinds of craft, from a skiff to a large two-masted schooner, waiting their turn to discharge their freight of berry crates and garden produce, reached half across the Elizabeth river. The rumble of the trucks was almost like the roar of thunder, as scores of negroes hustled crates, barrels and boxes aboard. Most of the time they were on a good round trot, and one had to pick his way with care; for, apparently, the truck was as thoughtful as the trundler.

As the long twilight fades utterly into night, the last crate is aboard. The dusky forms of the stevedores are seen in an old pontoon- shaped boat on their way to Portsmouth, but their outlines, and the melody of their rude song, are soon lost in the distance. The ship, that has become like a huge section of Washington Market, casts off her lines, and away we steam, diffusing on the night air the fragrance of a thousand acres, more or less, of strawberries.

It was late in the night that followed the next day before we reached New York, but on the great covered wharf, to which was given a noonday glare by electric light, there was no suggestion of the darkness and rain without. Various numbers, prominent on the sides of the building, indicated the lines of transit and the commission houses to which the immense, indiscriminate cargo was assigned. With a heavy jar and rumble that would not cease till the ship was empty, a throng of white laborers wheel each package to its proper place. Mr. Young's crates soon grew into what seemed, in the distance, a good-sized mound. The number above them stood for Eldridge & Carpenter, West Washington Market. Thither we followed them the next morning, but found that the most of them had already been scattered throughout the city, and realized that the berries we had seen a few hours before on the strawberry farm were even then on uptown breakfast-tables. vBn8fyLva/khXoU7zKqDNLPR7ufS2EybR44AMgrIz+fLBgeICGZJmVe5Zpb/zSEx