Connecticut western news., 1902-01-09
WIDOW CROcKER'S BOARDERS
A Picture of Life in Sunny Southern
 Town.
MARK TWAIN'S TALES RECALLED.

Negroes-The Best Biscuits.
 The widow Crocker had gone over to Miss Pleasance to borrow a bowl of leaven to make some light-bread for the yankee boarders and one of the little Crockers, Julia. was in the front room trying to entertain the lady and ln- cidentally to tote in an armful of pine for the open fire. This was in Gary, North Carolina, about a month ago.
 Take a map of North Carolina and look closely about half an inch from Raleigh-to the left-and you will see the name. Were you in central North Carolina you could see that Cary Is nine miles of Southern and also of Sea board railroad tracks west of Raleigh, and twenty miles southeast of Durham Gary is a country village of about 700 souls, black and white, and seven stores all located within one square mile. Competition2 Some.
 Julia Crocker told the tragedy of the AS~@- like this: 1t did seem as if all of mammals folks done died the past year In the winter mammals aunt died, and in April papa died. Then directly Cousin Joe died, and the 10th of last July mammals COW died" Now this COW was full blooded Jersey, which IS worthy of remark in central North Caro- lima. The widow now has a half-blood Jersey, and serves the boarders with good buttermilk.
 Inquiry of the widow revealed that Old Man Crocker was a good man and Mason, and had been fatally injured at the saw mill, where he was overseer, while saving a brothers life. The saw mill is part of tho plant of the Cary Lumber Company, which is owned by Duke of Durham; the tobacco Duke. Duke has lumber plants all over the South.
 To perpetuate the memory of Old Man Crocker in the household the widow has saved the floral pieces from the coffin and they are 8 part of the decorations of the front room which waa occupied by the writer and his wife. The relict of Alonzo Crocker was his third wife, and three-quarter size portraits of his two previous helpmeets also adorn the front room along with some of his Masonic literature. The desired effect was produced. We never in our waking hours in that room were obIivious to the memory of Old Man Crocker; and when in the dead of a southern night the writer would arise and grope about for the lamp and grasp a floral piece by mistake he was sincere ly glad that Alonzo Orocker had been a brother Mason or he would have wish ed him i'll in his present abiding place.
 The Crockers are typical of the country people of the Old North State, who have 8 house or two and right much of land. They have ordinary educations and are by no means of the no account variety of whites of whom there is 8 much smaller number in North than in South Carolina towns.
 Our stay in Gary resulted in one oi the pleasantest Sunday afternoons of our recollection and 8 day to be re. membered It was December the 9th. 8 soft, balmy day and with Mrs Crocker and little barefooted Stanley we started out for ramble Tn the North Carolina woods. No wraps were needed and we picked and ate persim' mons on the way. A couple of hours in those woods with their oaks. pines and mosses is complete recompense fol a ten days stay in this town where il was all the time impossible to buy eggs and part of the time butter.
 Yes, little Stanley Crockef wss bare. footed. North Carolina children go barefooted in December and some of them all winter. We had little fall of snow there one day and the widow admonished Stanley as follows: ''Son, you musn't go out barefooted in the snow. You will chap your feet. Go hunt yo' shoes or else you must sure enough stay here right much of the mawnin' till the snow melts away. Stanley burdened his feet with shoes and stockings till noon, but after din- ner one could sec him picking his way barefooted between the little patches ot snow that still fingered. Stanley is six and Democrat and l would not be surprised if some day he became gover' nor of the Tar Heel state. Pneumoria: Absurd.
 The little Crockers go to the free school-a good school-snd some day will go to the Gary High School which is @ private enterprise and draws pupils from all over the state, there being a month ago about 150 pupils. The one pretty street of Cary leads up to this school, and by the way there is another street in Cary which brings Mark Twain" immediately to mind and you can almost point out the house where "Tom Sawyer's" aunt lived, and if "Huck Finn" had a cousin you can find him hanging round the Seaboard depot And bere are some of Clenans' Pages and Stockton's negroes, and some other negroes who don't make good reading.
 To be truthful the majority of the negroes about Gary can be catalogued as "bad." They arc 8 terror to the Tone women, and Mrs Crocker always had one of the men boarders answer a rap on the door at night; and the children cluster about their mother after supper and are ''skeered" to cross the back yard from the kitchen to the house. And the writer seldom left his revolver on the bureau when he went down to the store after supper, for Cary at night is as dark as the inside of a COW. By majority don't mean all, for the social equality problem dis turbs the negro race within itself, the family niggers" not wishing to associate with the field niggers." This distinction is relic of ante bellurl days, and the house servants and their descendants are better class of negroes than those who worked in the fields of the plantations, and their descendants. The latter have bred 8 mo account race who seldom work, are bundles oi rags, nearly starve in the winter, and get considerable of their food by the laying on of hands. The family nig. gers" make good servants, but the others are tough proposition. The present govsrn of North Carolina, 0. B. Aycock, is making 8 tremendous effort for the education of both blacks and whites in his state, and let us hope that the condition of all the negroes will i'm. prove, as we'll as that of the ignorant whites, whose numbers are happily