Sheriff John Flournoy loafed in the office of the Tickfall Whoop, and listened to the bark and splutter of a little one-dog-power engine attached to the printing press. The air was permeated with the odor of gasoline, machine oil, and printers’ ink. The cigar he was attempting to smoke tasted of all three, and he tossed it out of the window.

“Just before Christmas is the worst time of the year,” he sighed impatiently. “Everybody tries to be so blame cheerful and good-natured.”

He turned around in his screaking swivel-chair and glared at the typewriter on the table before him. He reached out an idle finger and touched a key; there was an immediate response in the sharp tap of the type upon the platen.

“I never did fiddle with one of these things,” he grinned to himself, as he picked up a sheet of paper and adjusted it in the machine. “But I’m never too old to learn.”

Then, with the ponderous middle finger of each giant hand, the big sheriff began to poke out letters which spelled words—sometimes. Tiny beads of sweat came out on his forehead; his iron jaws clamped; his lips tightened; and a strained look came into his eyes, accentuating the tiny wrinkles which formed crows’-feet on each side of his temples.

“Gosh!” he complained. “I never worked as hard in my whole life. Why in thunder don’t they arrange these letters alphabetically, instead of scrambling them all over the ranch so a feller can’t find them?”

After a long time he leaned back with a sigh of infinite relief and snatched the paper from the machine. A broad grin spread over his face at the sight of his handiwork.

“This is a fearful and wonderful thing,” he chuckled. “I didn’t know there were as many figures, punctuation marks, and capital letters in the world as I have interspersed gratuitously in this interesting communication.”

The bark and splutter of the gasoline engine suddenly ceased. Flournoy sprang up and opened the door of the office entering into the press-room.

“What’s the matter?” he demanded. “Broke down?”

“Naw,” the one lone printer informed him. “I’m finished.”

“No, you ain’t!” Flournoy informed him. “Come in here a minute!”

Wonderingly, the printer entered the office. Flournoy handed him the sheet of paper on which he had been writing.

“How much space will that take in your paper?” the sheriff asked.

The printer finished reading, broke into a loud laugh, and answered:

“About two sticks.”

“All right,” Flournoy grinned. “You set that up, take some article of the same length out of your paper, and put mine in its place. Then run me off three copies.”

Half an hour later the printer entered the office with three damp copies of the Tickfall Whoop and pointed to the contribution which Flournoy had furnished.

“These three papers are all you ran off?” the sheriff asked.

“Yep.”

“All right. You understand this piece of news is not for general circulation.”

Folding and pocketing the three copies, Flournoy walked slowly back toward his office in the courthouse.

Sitting on a stone step in front of the court house, trusting the December sun to limber up his rheumatic muscles, was old Isaiah Gaitskill. Motionless as a stone idol, his battered wool hat in his clawlike hand, toothless, his face wrinkled like the withered hull of a walnut, his snow-white wool fitting his head like a rubber cap, he made a characteristic picture of the South.

“Have you seen a copy of the Tickfall Whoop this morning, Isaiah?” Flournoy asked.

“Naw, suh. I lef’ my specks to home, an’ so I didn’t git no paper,” Isaiah answered easily.

“Here’s one of ’em,” Flournoy grinned, taking it from his pocket. “You better look it over—there’s something about you in it.”

“How’s dat, boss?” Isaiah asked quickly. “Who knowed my name so good dat he writ’ me in de paper?”

“Your name isn’t mentioned,” Flournoy smiled. “It just speaks of the colored folks in general. Shall I read the article to you?”

“Yes, suh, ef you please, suh,” Isaiah answered eagerly. “I hadn’t oughter lef’ my readin’ specks at de hawg-camp. My Lawd, how come all de niggers got spoke about in de white folks’ paper?”

Flournoy impressively opened the sheet, adjusted his eye-glasses with dignity, frowned portentously, knowing well that the negro was watching every move. Having thus impressed Isaiah with the importance of the article, Flournoy read aloud what he had written a few minutes before:

DANGER! DANGER!

ALL THE NEGROES IN TICKFALL ABOUT TO DIE!

A mysterious disease has broken out among the negroes in Tickfall, resulting in a number of sudden deaths. The doctors of the town declare there is no cure. The parish health-officer, Dr. Moseley, pronounces the disease to be “ancestors,” and declares that all the negroes have them——

There was a lot more of the same sort, and it was read aloud by Sheriff Flournoy with due impressiveness, and with the design of striking terror into the hearts of the negroes of Tickfall. When he had finished reading, this incorrigible practical joker asked seriously:

“Would you like to have a copy of this paper, Isaiah?”

“Yes, suh, boss! Gimme two copies!” Isaiah exclaimed as he sprang to his feet. “I’s gwine down an’ tell de niggers somepin dey don’t know!”

Snatching the papers from the sheriff, old Isaiah started toward Dirty-Six with surprising speed for a man of his age and feebleness. The first person he met was the Rev. Vinegar Atts.

“How come all dis bust of speed, Isaiah?” the fat preacher grumbled. “Whut’s itchin’ on you to trabbel so peart?”

Isaiah thrust the paper into the hands of Vinegar Atts.

“Read!” he chattered. “Read dat paper an’ git ready to die!”

The fat, pot-bellied, squat-legged preacher spraddled his feet in the middle of the road like a Colossus and began to read. Suddenly his hand trembled, his feet began to shuffle in the sand, and he breathed heavily and audibly, like an asthmatic donkey. When he had finished, his hands dropped inertly to his sides, and with wide-open mouth, he sucked in a breath which threatened to consume all the air in Tickfall.

“My Gawd!” he bawled. “Isaiah, I tell you de honest truth—I ain’t fitten to die. I ain’t made no kind of arrangements to die!”

“Dat’s right!” Isaiah agreed mournfully. “Dis here terr’ble news is done kotch me up short, too!”

“Lemme sot down!” Vinegar panted, as he walked to the curb and sat down with his feet in the gutter.

The paper shook in his trembling hand, and Vinegar glared at it with horror-stricken eyes. One imagines that a condemned criminal would gaze at a cup of poison with such a look. The man’s thick lips turned ashen, and when he snatched off his hat his scalp had become furrowed with little ridges.

To one unfamiliar with the negro character, it is almost incredible how much importance the members of that race attach to the printed word. Since that time, over half a century ago, when every negro received a copy of the Emancipation Proclamation and by the magic of print found himself free from bondage, it has never occurred to one of them to question the veracity of any article in book, magazine, or newspaper. Printed words have the potency of words of Holy Writ.

“O Lawdy!” Atts bawled. “Ain’t dis awful? My gosh, I never had no notion befo’ whut a mean, wuthless, onery nigger I is! Isaiah, I’s a bad nigger. Nobody don’t soupspicion how bad I is!”

“Gawd knows!” Isaiah remarked gloomily.

“Yes, brudder,” Vinegar whined, gasping for air. “Dat is whut is troublin’ my mind right now!”

“Sheriff John Flournoy gimme two papers,” Isaiah said. “I cain’t read nothin’. I’s gwine leave ’em wid you. I’s moseyin’ back to de hawg-camp to git ready to die!”

“Dat’s right, Isaiah,” Vinegar mourned. “Dat is all whut is lef’ fer us po’ niggers to do. Less all start to git ready to prepare to die!”

A few minutes later Vinegar Atts entered the Hen-Scratch saloon, dragged his lead-weighted feet over the sand-covered floor, and fumblingly spread out a copy of the paper upon the table before the eyes of Skeeter Butts, Hitch Diamond, and Figger Bush.

“Read dat, niggers!” he bellowed in awe-stricken tones. “Read an’ prepare fer de end!”

Skeeter Butts started to read the article aloud, but long before he had finished his voice was trembling until he could hardly enunciate the awful words. He stopped, placed his quivering hands over his face, tried to rub the stiffness out of the muscles of his lips and cheeks, and sighed:

“You finish it fer us, Revun! Dis is awful!”

When Vinegar Atts concluded, the three negroes groaned aloud.

“Whar did you git dat paper, Revun?” Hitch Diamond inquired, his giant form shaking with the palsy.

“Isaiah got it from Sheriff Flournoy,” Atts replied.

“Ef Sheriff Flournoy an’ Dr. Moseley is tuck it up, dar ain’t no hopes fer us,” Skeeter Butts lamented. “Dem white mens do bizzness wid niggers ’thout no pity. De pest-wagon is comin’ fer us all!”

Into each mind came the instant recollection of that dreadful time, thirty years before, when the yellow-fever had invaded Tickfall, leaving barely enough of the living to bury the dead; when two-wheeled carts had rumbled through the negro settlements of Tickfall at midnight, and the cart-driver had bellowed through a cloth saturated with carbolic acid and wrapped around his mouth: “Bring out your corpse!”

“Whu-whu-whut is ancestors?” Hitch Diamond stammered, glaring at the newspaper. “Whut kind of new ailment is dat?”

“De paper don’t say,” Skeeter Butts declared tremblingly. “But I figger it’s some kind of new worm or bug. All de niggers has ’em.”

“I wonder ef dat’s how come I feels so bad?” Figger Bush asked fearfully, pulling at his little shoebrush mustache. “I thought I needed a drink or somepin, but dis writin’ says it’s a epizootic!”

“No mo’ drinks fer you, Figger,” Vinegar Atts rumbled. “Ef you figger on havin’ any shore hopes of heaven, you better cut it out!”

“I—I—I swears off now!” Figger stuttered, looking at Atts with eyes which nearly popped out of his head.

“All us niggers better refawm,” Hitch Diamond declared. “I don’t b’lieve prize-fightin’ is a fitten occupation fer a nigger about to die!”

“Sellin’ booze shorely ain’t a heavenly job,” Skeeter said sadly. “I never thought ’bout dat befo’.”

“Preachin’ don’t he’p a nigger be as good as I wish it would,” Rev. Vinegar Atts lamented. “I’s a real mean nigger myse’f!”

“Ef all de niggers in Tickfall dies, whut’ll de white folks do fer wuck-hands?” Figger Bush asked.

“Huh,” Hitch Diamond grunted. “No white man wouldn’t miss you! You ain’t did a day’s wuck sense you wus bawned.”

“I wus bawned tired,” Figger said defensively. “I’s jes’ nachelly one of dese set-easy niggers!”

“You better git a hustle on you in yo’ las days,” Skeeter informed him. “De good Lawd ain’t got no use fer lazy folks.”

“Us better all git gooder dan we is,” Vinegar Atts said positively. “I been tellin’ dese Tickfall niggers eve’y Sunday ’bout deir devilmint, but ’tain’t done ’em no good. Now it’s plum’ too late!”

“Naw, Revun, ’tain’t too late,” Skeeter Butts said earnestly. “I b’lieve us’ll all listen to religium advices right now. Don’t gib us up—keep on tryin’!”

“Would you wish to he’p me refawm dese niggers?” Atts asked.

“Suttinly,” Skeeter said eagerly. “Ef dey don’t refawm, I’ll shoot daylights through ’em—I—I mean I’ll be powerful sorry for ’em.”

Skeeter took a big breath, sighed audibly, and wiped the cold sweat from his temples.

“Will you he’p in dis refawm, Hitch?” Vinegar inquired.

“Shore will!” Hitch informed him. “I’ll begin on de fust nigger you p’ints out to me. Jes’ one religium roun’ will be all Hitchie wants—I’s de real K. O. con of dis town.”

“Dat ain’t de right kind of talk to use, Hitch,” Vinegar said reprovingly. “You better learn some church-word talk befo’ you starts out on dis refawm.”

“Dem niggers will git my drift,” Hitch declared with conviction.

“Whut refawms is we gwine start?” Skeeter Butts asked.

“Lawd,” Figger Bush squeaked. “It’s a endless job—look at me for ninstunce!”

“Whut is yo’ mos’ upsettin’ sin, Figger?” Vinegar asked.

Figger meditated for a long time. Then he said:

“So many sins is done got me down dat I don’t rickolect which one fust upset me, Revun.”

“Aw, don’t waste no time on Figger!” Skeeter Butts said disgustedly. “He’s a hopeless job!”

“Don’t say dat, Skeeter!” Figger pleaded. “You know you is done led me inter all de devilmint I ever done!”

Skeeter gasped like a landed fish.

“Ain’t it de truth!” he mourned. “You ain’t never had sense enough to be bad by yo’se’f! I shore is made a bad impression on you, Figger—I’s awful sorry!”

“Less pass some rules ’bout dis refawm!” Hitch Diamond proposed. “We’ll bunch all de sins togedder an’ tell de niggers to quit ’em all!”

“Dat’s de idear!” Vinegar agreed. “Git me a pencil an’ a piece of write-on paper!”

Perfervid advocates of temperance and total abstinence violently proclaim without fear of successful contradiction that in the haunts of the demon rum are hatched out all the iniquitous schemes for the destruction of the morals of the people. Nevertheless, this is the record of the most extensive reform ever achieved in any community in the United States, and it was born in the Hen-Scratch saloon, in a negro settlement called Dirty-Six, in Tickfall, Louisiana, on a certain day in December.

For two hours the four negroes sweated and fumed, consuming cigarettes, and devising their code of morals. At last Vinegar Atts laid the sheet of paper on the table and they surveyed the result:

“My Lawd!” Figger Bush sighed. “Dat takes away all my employments. Ef a nigger cain’t do none of dem things he mought as well be dead!”

“You’se gwine be soon enough, Figger,” Vinegar Atts reminded him in mournful tones. “Don’t go shovin’ up dat happenstance by wishin’ fer it!”

“‘No fites,’” Hitch Diamond read. “Dat puts me outen bizziness.”

“I ain’t got no job,” Skeeter mourned, looking at the paper. “‘No drams, no gamblen.’”

“‘No lofen,’” Vinegar Atts lamented. “I’s a powerful fat nigger to git active right sudden, at my age.”

Suddenly Atts sprang to his feet and howled:

“Hol’ on, niggers—us needs anodder rule! I adds, ‘No cuttin’ out church!’”

“’Tain’t necessary,” Hitch snickered. “You cain’t keep de niggers outen chu’ch when terr’ble times comes!”

“I guess us better git out an’ succulate dis repote, niggers,” Vinegar said when he received this assurance. “Us ain’t got any too much time. De Shoofly chu’ch-bell rings to-night at eight o’clock.”

The grapevine telephone was promptly put into operation, and in twenty minutes every negro in Tickfall knew that a dreadful and mysterious malady was rife among them, and that death waited just around the corner with a sharp butcher-knife in his hand.

Laughter died in the throats of the most laughter-loving people in the world; the thrumming of the banjo ceased in the cabin; the chatter of care-free women and the shouts of happy pickaninnies sank away into silence; easy-smiling lips took on a pout of distress, and eyes which usually glowed with humor looked into the mystery and the dark of the unknown and were strained and fear-stricken.

Like old hens going to roost, the women began to assemble in the large, barnlike Shoofly church long before dark. The town began to fill up with negroes from the plantations and the swamps, and from every negro settlement in Tickfall, the feet of the negroes made straight paths toward the Shoofly church. The ringing of the church-bell was a signal for the belated to hasten, and the building was packed with people when Vinegar Atts rose and started a hymn. It was an old, familiar tune to them all, and for a moment the great volume of sound rolled out of the house and thundered into the ears of all the white inhabitants of the town. But as the congregation began to consider the meaning of the words they sang, they appeared ominous with warning and threat, and gradually the voices died away:

Then Vinegar Atts announced:

“Mr. Muskeeter Butts will specify de puppus of dis meetin’!”

Skeeter arose, clawed at his high, white collar so that he could speak without strangling to death, adjusted his enormous cuffs so that he could hold the newspaper, and began in a trembling, squeaky voice:

“Marse John Flournoy gib dis here newspaper to Isaiah Gaitskill. Brudder Isaiah gib it to Revun Vinegar Atts. I reads a piece offen dis here front page.”

As Skeeter read, the negroes joined in with a wailing lamentation, which as the fearful news sank into their consciousness became thunderous.

“‘Danger! Danger!’” Skeeter read. “‘All de niggers in Tickfall about to die!’”

(“O Lawd, hab mussy! Dig my grave wid a silber spoon!”)

“‘A mysterious disease has broken out among the negroes in Tickfall, result-in’ in a num-ber of sud-den death——’”

(“Ah-ee. O he’p us! Gwine to die!”)

“‘De dorctors of de town de-clare dar is no cure—’”

(“Jes’ plum’ ’bleeged an’ bound to die!”)

All night long the negroes remained packed in the Shoofly church, actually too scared to go home in the dark. Song after song rolled like thunder from the building, a pathetic effort to drown their fears with music. Never had Vinegar Atts been as earnest in his prayers and exhortations, nor had the people of his parish ever before shown such earnestness in their responses. Every man and woman in the church professed religion that night. Never was a reform as instantaneous and as complete.

Along toward day the negroes began to rid themselves of their weapons of sin. Figger Bush came to the front of the congregation with the “jerks” and tremblingly laid upon the top of the table a cheap pistol, a pair of brass knucks, and a deck of greasy, soiled playing cards. His example was contagious, and in a few minutes the table was loaded with cards, whisky bottles, dice, brass knucks, daggers, razors, rabbit feet, and hoodoo-charms of all sorts.

“Cornfess yo’ sins!” Vinegar Atts bellowed. “Cornfess up!”

Negroes sprang up all over the house and bawled their iniquities into the ears of the people, but each negro was too intent on thinking of his own transgression to listen to the vices of his fellow, who spoke as a dying man to dying men!

When the rising sun dissolved the last lurking shadow, the all-night revival came to an end in this manner:

Hitch Diamond arose, holding in his hand the sheet of paper which contained the rules of reform devised in the Hen-Scratch saloon.

“I motions befo’ we turns out dat all of us promise to keep de rules wroted down on dis paper!” he bellowed.

After he had read the list the congregation unanimously adopted this new code of conduct and dispersed. The people walked home in groups, looking fearfully behind them at intervals, lifting their feet high like turkeys walking through mud, ready at an instant for precipitate flight.

The sudden reform among the negroes of Tickfall caused a sensation among the white people of the village.

As a general thing, a white man was accustomed to spending four days hunting for a negro willing to do half a day’s work; he secured promises from ten darkies to “be dar early in de mawnin’.” Then he waited ten days, and went out and did the work himself.

But by nine o’clock on this day, the Tickfall bank was crowded with negroes who wished to see Marse Tom Gaitskill about getting a job. Every merchant in the town was beset by applications for labor. Darkies walked from house to house, seeking employment, and every chance pedestrian upon the street was accosted with a greeting which after a while almost shattered the nerves of the white inhabitants of the village:

“Got any wuck fer a strong, willin’ nigger, boss?”

Of course the negroes spoke not a word which would reveal the reason for this sudden increase in industry, and the white people could only observe the amazing results and wonder.

Nearly every lawn in Tickfall held a boy busy with tools, cutting the grass, raking the dead leaves, hoeing out the flower-beds, and mending the fences. White people accustomed to seeing a workman take ten minutes to chop down one weed, and half an hour to light his corn-cob pipe, now observed that all were working with feverish haste, and at the same time with the most minute care and exactness as if it were a religious observance of some sort.

“What ails all these coons in town?” Gaitskill laughed as he looked down the street and saw not a single dusky loafer.

“Christmas is coming!” Flournoy laughed. “Day after to-morrow is Christmas. Had you forgotten?”

“They must expect to draw a prize-package from the white Santa Clauses this year,” Gaitskill grinned. “Heretofore they’ve been jest as lazy before as after.”

At that moment Hitch Diamond came around the corner and stopped in front of the Gaitskill store.

“Marse Tom,” he said earnestly. “How much do a barrel of lime cost?”

“Not much,” Gaitskill said. “Want to whitewash something?”

“Yes, suh; dat is, some yuther niggers do. Us is got a notion to waste a lot of whitewash on our fences an’ cabins.”

“I’ll give the niggers all the lime they need,” Gaitskill said promptly. “Tell ’em to come to this store and get it free!”

Hitch Diamond turned and walked hastily down the street. In the next half hour he paid a call at every cabin in all the negro settlements of Tickfall. He pounded on each cabin door with his iron fist, and when the door was opened he entered and looked around.

“How many niggers lives in dis cabin?” he asked. “How many of dat gang is got ’um a job?”

When he found a negro who had no employment, he swept down upon him with all the righteous fury of a prophet of old.

“Whut ails you, nigger? Don’t you know you’s gwine to die? Git ready! Git ready! Go to Marse Tom Gaitskill’s sto’ an’ tell dem white men to gib you a bucket of lime an’ a white-wash brush. Den you white dis cabin, inside an’ out, an’ put whut’s lef’ on dis ole rickety, busted-down fence! Fix de fence up, too!”

At noon, when Gaitskill passed his store on the way to lunch, a clerk ran out and said:

“Colonel, do you really mean for us to give all that lime away? The niggers have carried away forty barrels of whitewash in the last two hours!”

Gaitskill emitted a sharp whistle of surprise. He scratched his head a moment, then grinned:

“It’s all right, Frank. Let ’em have it. Christmas is coming!”

Rev. Vinegar Atts found himself overwhelmed with work. The sudden change in the moral life of his parishioners made a demand upon his services every moment of that busy day. Sick people, who could not come to the church, sent for him to come to see them. Prayer-meetings were held in many of the cabins. A constant stream of people moved in and out of the Shoofly church, and their singing and shouting could be heard for a mile.

“Git ready to die! Git ready to die!” Vinegar bawled from house to house. “De ancestors will git you ef you don’t watch out!”

Under Hitch Diamond’s direction, all the negro settlements were being whitewashed. Under Vinegar Atts’s admonition the cabins were swept out, the yards were cleaned, the cabins were aired, and every scrap of paper and every particle of trash was gathered up and burned. These were not original ideas with the negroes. They had been taught this in the fever epidemic, when a government health officer had had charge of the sanitary work of the village.

The village began to fill up with strange darkies who had come in from the plantations and the swamp.

“Whut you coons doin’ here?” Vinegar Atts demanded of a bunch of them.

“Us come in whar de dorctors kin git to us easy,” one of them answered nervously. “Word wus sont dat all de niggers is about to die!”

“Dat’s right!” Vinegar bellowed. “But whut sort of sight will you coons be when you is dead—mud all over yo’ britches an’ no socks on? Git busy and clean up! Go down to de bayou an’ take a wash—buy you a clean shu’t an’ some socks—git ready to die!”

Skeeter Butts sat alone in the Hen-Scratch saloon. He was the only idler in Tickfall, a compulsory idler, for the reform had put him out of business. The sound of the fiddle and the banjo was heard no more. Laughter and shouting had ceased. Not a negro entered his barroom, and most of his regular customers passed on the other side of the street. Skeeter sat in front of his saloon all day in mournful and fearful loneliness.

Then, just at dark, he had the surprise of his life.

Three men came up the street and stopped, talked for a moment in low tones, then entered the saloon on tiptoe and came to where Skeeter was sitting behind the bar.

“Us is a cormittee to wait on you, Skeeter,” Vinegar Atts said in funereal tones.

“Whut is I done?” Skeeter asked in a frightened voice.

“’Tain’t whut you done; it’s whut you ain’t done,” Vinegar informed him. “You done showed yo’se’f de one sinner in Tickfall.”

“How come?” Skeeter asked.

Vinegar Atts produced the paper on which he had written the “Rules of Reform” in that very room the day before. He handed the paper to Skeeter.

“Whut do de fust rule say, Skeeter?” he demanded.

“‘No lofen,’” Skeeter read tremblingly.

Vinegar Atts placed a heavy hand upon the shoulder of the barkeeper and bawled:

“What is you done fer a livin’ to-day, nigger?”

“Nothin’,” Skeeter stammered. “I—it ’pears like you-all is done put me outside of a job. I ain’t had no customers to-day.”

“You been loafin’,” Hitch Diamond proclaimed in a pugnacious voice. “How does you especk to git to heaven when you die? Don’t you know de ancestors will get you befo’ mawnin’?”

“Less don’t gib de ancestors no show at him,” Figger Bush squealed. Figger was covered with whitewash, had done his first day’s work for years, and was feeling righteous. “Less hang him to a tree an’ larn him a lesson!”

“Hol’ on, fellers!” Skeeter begged earnestly. “I didn’t ketch on ’bout dis rule. I figgered dat a nigger whut had a job oughter stay on it. De Tickfall niggers all j’ined de refawm, but I thought I oughter stay on my job so I could sell booze to de coons from de swamp an’ de plantations. But none of ’em didn’t buy!”

“You git outen dis sinful saloon an’ go to wuck,” Hitch howled, shaking his hamlike fist under Skeeter’s nose, “or I’ll bust yo’ fool neck!”

“Yo’ intentions is good, Hitch,” Vinegar Atts said reprovingly; “but you is done busted rule two whut says ‘no quorlin’,’ an’ you mighty nigh fractioned rule number three whut specifies ‘no fightin’!”

“I—er—uh—Skeeter knows I ain’t mean no harm,” Hitch murmured painfully. “I jes’ said dat because I loves him. I’d druther bust his neck dan not hab him foller along atter us when us goes to heaben.”

“I’ll git good,” Skeeter said meekly. “I’ll see Marse John Flournoy as soon as it’s good daylight to-morrer.”

“Better not pesticate Marse John, Skeeter,” Figger Bush advised him. “He tole me dat de nex’ nigger whut axed him fer a job wus flirtin’ wid a hearse!”

“Whut kin I do?” Skeeter lamented. “Dar uster be mo’ free jobs dan willin’ niggers; now dar’s mo’ niggers dan jobs.”

“Ef you cain’t wuck fer somebody else, wuck, for yo’se’f,” Vinegar Atts advised him. “Git a scrub-brush an’ slop-bucket an’ scour out dis here saloom. Git a sack of lime an’ whitewash it! Dis house belongs to Sheriff Flournoy, an’ he’ll remember you kind when you is goned hencefo’th an’ ain’t never no mo’!”

“I’ll shore do it!” Skeeter assured them.

Having accomplished their mission, the committee then sat down and became sociable over Skeeter’s cigarettes. When they had smoked for a while Skeeter suddenly asked:

“Revun Atts, whut is de lates’ news from de epizootic?”

“I ain’t heerd nothin’,” Atts replied. “Of co’se, I ain’t gwine aroun’ beggin’ fer de pest-wagon by axin’ de white folks no fool questions!”

“Whut do de papers say?” Skeeter persisted.

“Dunno.”

“I bet you some of dem papers is got a heap mo’ in ’em ’bout de disease dan de papers us niggers got to read,” Figger Bush proclaimed.

“Huh!” Vinegar Atts exclaimed. “I never thunk of dat! Of co’se, de white folks ain’t gwine print all de news fer a nigger.”

“Dey don’t divide up nothin’ else even,” Hitch Diamond said. “I motions dat Skeeter Butts be ’p’inted a cormittee to visit all de white folks’ houses an’ colleck up deir old Tickfall Whoopses so us kin git de lates’ news.”

“I’ll do it,” Skeeter said uneasily; “but I ain’t gwine tell ’em whut I wants wid de papers. I’ll specify dat I wants ’em to cover some shelves in de Hen-Scratch.”

“Start soon in de mawnin’, Skeeter,” Atts admonished him. “We’ll meet you here at dinner-time an’ read up—mebbe all de niggers on de plantations is dead an’ us don’t know it. I’s seed a whole passel of buzzards sailin’ aroun’ to-day!”

The committee moved on, visiting from house to house, admonishing each occupant who had not observed all the rules of reform, just as the white men had done years before during the fever epidemic.

Then a totally unexpected thing happened.

The next day being Christmas Eve, every negro in Tickfall lost his job at noon. All business places were closed, and every man went home to get a good start for the Christmas celebration. Several hundred negroes found themselves with a half-day of idleness confronting them. They cut all the weeds on the streets in all the negro settlements, burned all the trash, put four coats of whitewash on the Shoofly church, mended all the fences, tore down several unsightly shacks which had been decaying in the sun for half a century, dug ditches to drain their communities, and ceased their work at dark to get supper and assemble in their church, where Vinegar Atts later confronted more work-weary parishioners then he had ever seen before.

In the midst of their evening service Skeeter Butts arrived, carrying a bundle of papers almost as large as himself, which he placed upon a table in front of the pulpit desk.

This incident was sensational in itself, promising all sorts of fearful possibilities; but the congregation received its greatest jolt when it beheld the Rev. Dr. Sentelle crippling slowly up the aisle behind Skeeter, leaning heavily upon his eleven-pound walking stick.

Dr. Sentelle was the lion of Tickfall, beloved and magnified by whites and blacks. He was a man of influence and power for miles around. Intense courage glowed in his eyes, which held smoldering flames like the eyes of a jungle beast; tenderness, gentleness, sweetness, and love, love, love were etched in the map of his pain-wrinkled face like an illuminated missal by Bellini; and his beautiful voice was as sweet as music, every spoken word caressing like a woman’s hand.

“Bless Gawd!” Vinegar Atts bellowed at sight of the white clergyman. “I capsizes right now in favor of de Revun Dr. Sentelle. He’s gwine fotch us a Chris’mus message!”

The entire congregation rose to their feet. Vinegar Atts trotted half-way down the aisle and met the cripple. With a murmur of thanks, the white man placed his delicate, blue-veined hand in the crotch of Vinegar’s powerful arm and stumbled slowly, feebly forward to the pulpit platform. When he had seated himself the negroes sank quietly back upon the benches.

In the meantime all the business men in Tickfall were holding a meeting in the rear of the Tickfall bank.

“I propose a basket of grub for every nigger cabin in town!” Gaitskill proclaimed as he sat at the head of the table. “We have no poor whites in this village, but the negroes are always hungry.”

There was a unanimous murmur of assent.

Then Gaitskill laughed.

“By the way, what has happened to set all the coons to cleaning up? I’ve been too dang liberal with my benefactions—I’m short sixty-two barrels of lime!”

“Christmas is coming!” several voices murmured, and there were many nodding heads, and a broad grin passed around the table.

“Say, fellers,” Sheriff Flournoy grinned, rising to his feet and taking a newspaper from his pocket, “er—ah—I beg pardon, are we through with business?”

“Sure!” Gaitskill smiled. “We’re agreed that the niggers get the grub.”

“I started a little joke in town the other day,” Flournoy went on.

Then he explained about the article he had written, and read it aloud to them.

There was a whoop of laughter, after which one asked:

“Did you get results?”

“No,” Flournoy said disgustedly. “I ought not to have started it with old Isaiah Gaitskill—he’s about half-witted.”

“By George!” Gaitskill exclaimed, springing to his feet. “That accounts for all this cleaning up and whitewash—the niggers are expecting an epidemic of disease and are getting ready to die!”

Perfect silence greeted this announcement as its full significance dawned upon each man. Then Dr. Moseley, the parish health officer, spoke earnestly:

“Gentlemen, let us not say one word to the contrary. Let the darkies clean up and keep clean!”

“I have done good by stealth and blush to find it fame!” Flournoy interrupted mockingly.

“It means health, gentlemen,” Dr. Moseley declared. “Health and long life to us all—er—by the way, I propose that as a toast right now!”

For nearly forty years Gaitskill had held this meeting in the rear of his bank on every Christmas Eve. The men were familiar with his custom, and the physician’s suggestion met with instant response.

Gaitskill rose, unlocked his desk, pushed back the top, and the men gazed with lively anticipation upon the glasses and decanters there concealed.

“Hitch!” Gaitskill called. “Oh, Hitch Diamond! Come here!”

There was no answer. Hitch had long before deserted the colonel and gone to the Shoofly church.

“I bet that coon answers promptly to-morrow morning,” Gaitskill laughed as he grumblingly filled the glasses.

“Christmas is coming!” a laughing chorus murmured.

Suddenly there was a shout which rolled like thunder over Tickfall, the sound permeating even the thick walls of the Tickfall bank.

“Listen to the niggers!” Flournoy grinned.

There was a moment’s silence; then the mighty ululations of a negro song floated to them on the wings of the wind. The men arose.

“Health and long life to us all!” Dr. Moseley repeated.

“To us all!” the men murmured with nodding heads. Then they drank.

Time inevitably weakens all reforms. It robs the greatest and most imminent danger of its terror. And time completely overthrew the reform in Tickfall and so endowed the negroes with courage that any timid darky would have tickled the whiskers of a bearcat with the end of his flat nose.

The time required to accomplish this relapse was one day—the day which comes but once a year—Christmas!

The day found every negro in Tickfall in a receptive mood. As a result, every white man in the town had the privilege of a few moments’ conversation with all the blacks in the town some time during the day.

The sun-slashed streets of Tickfall were filled with them, moving to and fro, like ants in a hill, all feverish in their activity, and all so shoutingly happy that the town was as noisy as a parrot’s cage.

Their order of advance was something like this:

And each white man had supplied himself with about half a barrel of cheap candy, three or four bunches of bananas, a barrel of apples, a hatful of small change, and a supply of tobacco, cigars, plugs, and snuff, bestowing these gifts according to his inclination.

The first ceremony of the day was the formal distribution of the eggnog to the servants of the household.

Of course, after Hitch Diamond, Vinegar Atts, Figger Bush, and the rest of our colored friends had spent three days in a frightful ride upon the water-wagon, their repeated visits to the homes of their Tickfall white friends where the eggnog foamed like the surf of the sea had a most demoralizing effect.

In fact, Hitch Diamond and Vinegar Atts called upon Marse Tom Gaitskill and made themselves such nuisances that Gaitskill locked them both up in an empty corn-crib and turned the water-hose on them.

Death had no terrors for these people on Christmas Day.

“Huh!” Hitch Diamond bellowed. “I wouldn’t be skeart to-day even ef de Revun Dr. Sentelle hadn’t made us such a purty speech. I done separated my idears from my habits!”

“I ain’t skeart, neider!” Vinegar Atts whooped. “Nobody ain’t gwine pat me in de face wid a spadeful of dirt!”

Christmas baskets came to every cabin; pickaninnies ran the streets, their pockets filled with pennies, and their hats laden with oranges, bananas, and cheap candy; children, white and black, cluttered up the few asphalt pavements with every sort of Christmas toys, until the careless pedestrian was in danger of tripping over some contraption and breaking every leg he had; and negro women gadded the streets dressed in finery which was very suggestive to the white folks of dresses they had seen earlier in the year in the drawing-rooms of their women.

By nightfall the Hen-Scratch saloon was filled with negro men, all perfectly sober, and all laughing, and all happy beyond the dreams of angels.

Figger Bush thrummed a banjo; Pap Curtain had a fiddle; Mustard Prophet blew a cornet; while every man exhausted the vocal treasury of his throat for sounds to add to the volume of music:

Vinegar Atts pushed through the crowd, shaking hands cordially, smiling like a big, fat baby, and bellowing his congratulations:

“Merry Chris’mus, niggers! Us is done fell from amazin’ grace to a floatin’ opportunity!”

“Bless Gawd!” Skeeter Butts squealed. “I’s shore glad us ain’t refawmed no more! Less all j’ine hands in a circuous-ring an’ sing dat good ole favoryte toon, ‘De Star-Spangled Banana’!”

“Naw!” Vinegar Atts bawled. “We is done loss all our good sense! Less go an’ pay our manners to de white folks!”

“Lead de way! Lead de way!” a chorus of voices answered. “Us follers right at yo’ hip!”

Weep and howl, ye dwellers in the East and West and North, because ye were not in Tickfall on that Christmas night! Your negroes have cast aside the supreme gifts which make us love them in the South—humor, pathos, laughter, and music!

You listen to your phonographs and try to imagine what real music is like; you go to grand opera and think you hear it; but reserve your judgment until you hear a marching column of negro men, each of their throats having the range and capacity of a pipe-organ, and all of their songs set to a sweet minor, which is characteristic of the music of all enslaved people since that far distant day when the whip-driven Israelites “hung their harps on the willows.”

On the Christmas following the close of the Civil War, the impoverished white people of Tickfall sent Christmas baskets to their ex-slaves, who were as poor and hungry as themselves. That night those ex-slaves, as an expression of their gratitude to their old masters, formed in a body and walked from house to house, singing the songs of the old plantation days. White women came out upon the porticoes, leaned their quivering shoulders against the big columns, and wept uncontrollably in memory of other and happier days.

White men stumped out upon those same porches with crutches and canes, or with wooden legs, and listening, visualized the smoke-fogged battlefields, the blood-drenched ground, the clash and onsets of the great war, and beyond the acrid smoke of that holocaust they beheld a magnificent civilization which rose in beauty like a dream, and then vanished forever more. For over half a century this custom had been observed every Christmas. It survived the horrors of the Reconstruction Era when Northern carpet-baggers sought to lead the black race astray and turn them against their former masters.

And now that marching column had formed again, two hundred strong, two abreast, with Vinegar Atts and Hitch Diamond in the lead.

All over Tickfall the white people were waiting for this, the day’s supreme event. The negroes knew the favorite songs of all the older citizens. Rev. Dr. Sentelle listened to “Dixie,” and “Jesus Lover of my Soul.” Bowing his acknowledgments, Dr. Sentelle said:

“Boys, when I die, I want you to sing both of those songs at my funeral!”

And a few years later they did it!

Marse Tom Gaitskill, being a Kentuckian, listened to “My Old Kentucky Home,” and to “Darling Nellie Gray”——

Leaving one house to go to another, the negroes always broke into some rollicking plantation melody, singing it on the way, so that their pilgrimage was a pilgrimage of song. At the end of the town, remote from all the negro settlements, was the home of the sheriff, Mr. John Flournoy, so that the negroes came to his residence last.

They marched melodiously into his yard, spread out over the lawn, taking care to trample down none of the flowers and shrubs, and their mighty voices reverberated through the valleys and from the hilltops, and could literally be heard for miles.

Mr. John Flournoy and his gracious wife stood upon the portico, sometimes smiling, sometimes with serious faces and moist eyes, as they listened to the old melodies which had colored the very fiber of their souls.

Finally a hush fell upon the crowd, and Mr. Flournoy thought the time for his speech had come. But not so.

Vinegar Atts stepped forward within a few feet of the porch steps, removed his battered slouch hat, and began:

“Marse John, all us niggers is been singing to youall white folks ever sense we warn’t more’n hawn-high to a billy-goat. We remembers all dem happy Chris’mus times of yuther years, an’ we wish we could keep up dis music eve’y Chris’mus till ole Gabriel blows his hawn. But de time is done come when us muss tell you good-by, an’ you won’t never hear our singin’ no more!”

“Lawd hab mussy!” a chorus of men’s voices sounded like a prayer.

“You is done been a good frien’ to all us po’ niggers, Marse John,” Vinegar went on earnestly. “We hates to go away an’ leave you——”

The negroes had begun to “weave,” and a moaning sound issued from every throat like a great organ tone, and the light of the full moon casting the shadows of the trees upon the upturned faces of the men, made an effect funereal and impressive indeed.

“What the devil are you talking about?” Flournoy demanded in a voice which was almost a scream.

“Us is gittin’ ready to die, Marse John,” Vinegar told him. “De paper is done printed de word about all de niggers havin’ dat new kind of epizootic, an’ you rickoleck when de yeller fever kotch us niggers all of us fell right down in de middle of de big road an’ died!”

Vinegar took a worn and ragged newspaper out of his pocket, unfolded it carefully, and handed it to Sheriff Flournoy. It was one of the copies of the Tickfall Whoop which Flournoy had given to old Isaiah Gaitskill several days before.

“You kin read whut de paper says yo’se’f, Marse John,” Vinegar said.

That was one time in Mr. John Flournoy’s life when he wished himself to be somewhere else immediately. He was an inveterate practical joker, but he was as tender-hearted as a woman, and it appalled him that he had administered this wound to his negro friends on this happiest day of the year.

“Boys,” he said painfully, “this article is not true—it is a joke! Somebody has been trying to scare you!”

“Who played dat joke on us, Marse John?” Vinegar Atts asked.

Flournoy took thirty seconds to consider his answer to that question, realizing as never before how very much the truth hurts, when you have to tell it!

“I did it!” he answered, and the words strangled in his throat.

There was one minute of perfect silence.

Then Vinegar Atts replied with just two words: “Ye-es, suh!”

Slowly he turned and started toward the street, Hitch Diamond walking beside him. Two and two, the crowd of negroes silently fell into line and marched out.

Skeeter Butts was the last to leave.

As Skeeter started through the gate he felt Flournoy’s heavy hand upon his shoulder and winced.

“Tell me the truth, you little yeller devil!” Flournoy drawled. “Didn’t you niggers know all the time that that was a joke?”

Skeeter chuckled evasively. He had no intention of revealing a secret of the most secretive race in the world; least of all did he intend to make trouble between the white folks by revealing the fact that Dr. Sentelle, pitying the fright and ignorance of the negroes, had investigated, learned the facts, and informed them.

But the sheriff’s hand upon his shoulder was suggestive of the majesty and might of the law, and Skeeter had a mortal fear of getting, as he would have expressed it, “into a lawsuit wid de cotehouse.”

“Yes, suh,” Skeeter chuckled. “We did learn a leetle about dat befo’ Chris’mus. We borrowed a lot of papers from de white folks an’ didn’t see nothin’ about it in deir papers, so us soupspicioned dat you had done got up a buzzo on us. But us is all Christians, Marse John—we don’t bear you no grudge!”

Then he slipped from the hand of the law and ran laughing down the street.