The Prince George's enquirer and southern Maryland advertiser. (Upper Marlborough, Md.) 1882-1925, 1897-01-29


~ who are scattered in trade, or what
not, all over the United States, while
some "poor white" or negro tenant un-
dertakes to pay a rent which, theoret-
ically almost nominal, is reduced in
practice to microscopic proportions.
Mortgages own many through fore
closure, storekeepers, perhaps, or law
yers in the local towns, s,-and, if they
get rent enough to pay taxes and keep
the buildings from actually falling, it is
the utmost satisfaction, unless, may be,
few days quail shooting in November,
that they derive from the acquisition.
In some places, indeed, the forests have
re-asserted themselves so freely that
the very deer, after banishment of a
century, let us say, have found their
way back to as great solitude as that
from which they were originally driv-
Here is a hillside on whose briary face
the withered corn-stalks of two years
ago are still standing, telling by their
miserable attenuation tale unmistak-
able. Here few acres of wheat, thin
beyond belief, upon the ground, and of
a sickly color, save where some old
tobacco-barn or cabin has stood, and a
bright, rank patch shows by contrast
what wheat should be in April, and
what is not. There, again, a field of
last years corn has been followed in
the ordinary local rotation by oats,
which, amid dead corn stalks and a
promising growth of weeds and bushes,
is making desperate struggle for ex-
istence. If it achieves this last, it may
thresh out six bushels to the acre,-a
miserable output indeed, but one which
the sickly wheatfeld across the road
will hardly run to. Fine horses, as
everybody knows: once scampered and
whinnyed over these now tangled
wastes,-horses that were the pride of
a sport-loving population, whose sires
often had borne names of note upon
Newmarket Heath and EPSON Downs,
themselves distinguished upon south
ern racetracks, and not unfamiliar with
the music of horn and hound. 1t is
needless to remark that the Virginia
horse, which still enjoys some reputa-
tion in America, does not find its mod
ell in the miserable drudges that, SCARED
by collar and trace-chain, toll in these
filrrows, or drag the crazy
half-loaded wagons along the old rock
But perhaps it is in the homesteads
themselves that the contrast between
the "then and now" is saddest. Many
of them you would hardly notice from
the turnpike, for, though standing
mostly upon hill tops, those that have
any past in social sense are a long
way back from the road, and often
hidden by those stately groves of for
ests trees that throw their protecting
arms around every well-constituted
Virginia homestead.
Here is one that, even after the war,
type of that simple, grac-
ious old-fashioned hospitality that dis
the period bofore it. The
track that wandered off the turnpike
the woods to the private en-
trance was easy enough to overlook
even in those days, and now, when the
dead leaves lie upon it, undisturbed by
passing wheel or hoof, it is difficult to
trace up to the two rotting posts upon
which once hung the ever open and
gate. The house itself in a
score of years seem to have lived life
time, and to have fastened from cheer
ful and well-preserved middle age to
decrepitude and decay. The windows
have mostly fallen out, and battered
shutter hangs here and there by sim
gle hinge from the sash to emphasize the
woebegone aspect of the walls.
Scared are these with ominous look
ing cracks in the brick that no inmates
whose interest in life was vigorous
and circulation normal could contem-
plate without dismay. A family of
"poor whites" occupy one wing of the
decaying mansion, and work their wild
will on portion of the surrounding
acres. And the ''poor white" of East
ern Virginia is, both in appearance
and ways of life, the most unlovely
sample of Anglo-SaNon at any rate,
that an inscrutable Providence has
fashioned. To suppose that a single
window-pane would be replaced, sim
gle nail driven into loose plank, or
a gate hung upon its hinges under the
auspices of these gentry, would be not
to know them. Ifanything were want
ted to intensity the melancholy of this
spectre of an old Virginia home. the
gaunt forms and yellow faces and va
cant stare of its present occupants are
well calculated to do so.
The heavy portico over the door,
-ssa.r...