Abner Daniel

HE young man stood in the field road giving directions to a robust negro who was ploughing the corn, which, in parallel rows, stretched on to the main road a quarter of a mile distant. The negro placed the point of his ploughshare a few inches from the first stalk of corn, wound the line around his wrist, and clucked to his horse. With a jangling jerk of the trace-chains the animal lunged ahead: the polished ploughshare cut into the mellow soil and sped onward, curling the gray earth like shavings, and uprooting and burying the tenacious crab-grass and succulent purslane.