When Peter realized how their ignorant and undisciplined thoughts flowed off into absurdities, and that they were entirely unaware of it, it brought a great depression to his heart.  He held up a hand with an earnestness that caught their vagrant attention.

“Listen!” he pleaded.  “Can’t you see how much there is for us black folks to do, and what little we have done?”

“Sho is a lot to do; we admits dat,” said Bluegum Frakes.  “But whut’s de use doin’ hit ef we kin manage to shy roun’ some o’ dat wuck an’ keep on libin’ anyhow, specially wid wages so high?”

The question stopped Peter.  Neither his own thoughts, nor any book that he had ever read nor any lecture that he had heard ever attempted to explain the enormous creative urge which is felt by every noble mind, and which, indeed, is shared to some extent by every human creature.  Put to it like that, Siner concocted a sort of allegory, telling of a negro who was shiftless in the summer and suffered want in the winter, and applied it to the present high wage and to the low wage that was coming; but in his heart Peter knew such utilitarianism was not the true reason at all.  Men do not weave tapestries to warm themselves, or build temples to keep the rain away.

The brown man passed on around the corner, out of the faint warmth of the sunshine and away from the empty and endless arguments which his coming had provoked among the negroes.

The futile ending of his first adventure surprised Peter.  He walked uncertainly up the business street of the village, hardly knowing where to turn next.

Cold weather had driven the merchants indoors, and the thoroughfare was quite deserted except for a few hogs rooting among the refuse heaps piled in front of the stores.  It was not a pleasant sight, and it repelled Peter all the more because he was accustomed to the antiseptic look of a Northern city.  He walked up to the third door from the corner, when a buzz of voices brought him to a standstill and finally persuaded him inside.

At the back end of a badly lighted store a circle of white men and boys had formed around an old-fashioned, egg-shaped stove.  Near by, on some meal-bags, sat two negroes, one of whom wore a broad grin, the other, a funny, sheepish look.

The white men were teasing the latter negro about having gone to jail for selling a mortgaged cow.  The men went about their fun-making leisurely, knowing quite well the negro could not get angry or make any retort or leave the store, all of these methods of self-defense being ruled out by custom.

“You must have forgot your cow was mortgaged, Bob.”

“No-o-o, suh; I—­I—­I didn’t fuhgit,” drawling his vowels to a prodigious length.

“Didn’t you know you’d get into trouble?”

“No-o-o, suh.”

“Know it now, don’t you?”

“Ya-a-s, suh.”

“Have a good time in jail, Bob?”

“Ya-a-s, suh.  Shot cra-a-aps nearly all de time tull de jailer broke hit up.”