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Show 408 WESTERN WILDS. " dun gone," " clean clar out," " git shet of it," are elevated to the dignity of good ordinary speech. About ten per cent, of the crowd are negroes, the waiters and barbers usually light- colored, sleek and polite, but the great mass black, ragged, and offensive. " How's the haalth on Nohth Fohk?" asks one native of another. " Pooty fayh," is the reply ; " but the spiral maginnis tuck a good many on Main Trinity this winter." This is Texan for spinal menin-gitis. Long afterwards I asked a negro in South Carolina how his people stood the winter, and received for reply : " Pooty fayh, but de menin- jeesus tuck lots of ' em." Similarly the motto, Sic Semper Ty-rannis, best known in the South as the noted exclamation of Wilkes Booth, is freely translated in Texas, " Six serpents and a tarantula." The farmers adjacent to Denison are of the old Southern type, none veiy wealthy, but all social, communicative, and glad to see the country improved, no matter by whom. There is no end to the land for sale, at from four to ten dollars per acre. At the hotels one hears of " canned milk" and " sure enough milk," the latter very scarce. All the butter used here comes from New York. There is not a county in this section that sells five hundred pounds of it per year. " Cheaper to sell cattle and buy it," they say ; and I suppose they know. There are no dairies, and very few potatoes are grown. Those on the table at the " Alamo " are from Iowa, of picked sizes, and worth from four to eight cents apiece. Per contra, good lemons can be bought at " two bits a dozen ; " fish very cheap, and first rate Texas beef at the same price as potatoes six or seven cents per pound. The soil hereabouts is slightly sandy; on the slopes it changes to a rich black loam, and yields large crops of corn, wheat and cotton. Thence I journeyed leisurely southward, over a soil like that of the Illinois prairies. Not more than one- fifth of this part of Texas is fenced in. Corn was two or three inches high, and wheat rather more advanced; but the air was still cool enough to make a little fire in the evening desirable. Farmers all tell the same story : " Monsus late, cold spring ; wust since I've been in Texas. Cawn got up three inches high; then was cut down by a big frost; then we had two weeks o' fine growin' weather, follercd by rain an' another frost ; now the cawn's doin' well agin, an' we've had the rain, an' the air's a leetle like light frost, but I hope not." We cross many clear streams, lined with timber; between them are strips of high prairie. In the center of the county we stop at Sherman, a fine old Texan town, and metropolis of this section before Denison |
