Having
done this to us--or perhaps it would seem more generous to say _for_
us--the caretaker told us that many persons who had heard him had
declared that Patrick Henry himself would have had a hard time doing it
better. But when he threatened, for contrast, to deliver the oration as
a less gifted elocutionist might speak it, my companion, in whom I had
already observed signs of restlessness, interrupted with the statement
that we were late for an engagement, and fled from the place, followed
by me.
* * * * *
In certain parts of the city, often at a considerable distance from the
warehouse and factory sections, one may occasionally catch upon the
breeze the faint, spicy fragrance of tobacco; and should one trace these
pleasant scents to their sources, one would come to a region of
factories in which rich brown leaves are transformed into pipe tobacco,
plug tobacco, or cigarettes. In the simpler processes of this work,
negro men and women are employed, and these with their natural
picturesqueness of pose and costume, and their singing, in the setting
of an old shadowy loft, make a tobacco factory a fascinating place. In
one loft you will see negro men and boys handling the tobacco leaves
with pitchforks, much as farm hands handle hay; in another, negro women
squatting upon boxes, stemming the leaves, or "pulling up ends," their
black faces blending mysteriously with the dark shadows of beams and
rafters.
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