The custodian of the church is glad to indicate the interesting stones, but is much more taken up with his own gift of oratory, as displayed when, on getting visitors inside the church, he takes his place on the spot where Patrick Henry stood, and delivers the famous oration.  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.  Here the air is laden not only with the sweet tobacco smell, mixed with a faint scent of licorice and of fruit, but is freighted also with a fine brown dust which is revealed where bars of sunlight strike in through the windows, and which seems, as it shifts and sparkles, to be a visible expression of the smell.

In the busy season “street niggers” are generally used for stemming, which is, perhaps, the leading part of the tobacco industry in Richmond, and these “street niggers,” a wild yet childlike lot, who lead a hand-to-mouth existence all year round, bring to the tobacco trade a wealth of semi-barbaric color.  To give us an idea of the character of a Richmond “street nigger” the gentleman who took my companion and me through the factory told us of having wanted a piece of light work done, and having asked one of these negroes:  “Want to earn a quarter?”

To which the latter replied without moving from his comfortable place beside a sun-baked brick wall:  “No, boss, Ah got a quahtah.”