Negro insolence grows beyond endurance. Their women are taught to insult their old mistresses and mock their poverty as they pass in their old, faded dresses. Yesterday a black driver struck a white child of six with his whip, and when the mother protested, she was arrested by a negro policeman, taken before a negro magistrate, and fined $10 for 'insulting a freedman.'"
Stoneman frowned: "Such things must be very exceptional."
"They are every-day occurrences and cease to excite comment. Lynch, the Lieutenant-Governor, who has bought a summer home here, is urging this campaign of insult with deliberate purpose"
The old man shook his head. "I can't think the Lieutenant-Governor guilty of such petty villainy."
"Our school commissioner," the doctor continued, "is a negro who can neither read nor write. The black grand jury last week discharged a negro for stealing cattle and indicted the owner for false imprisonment. No such rate of taxation was ever imposed on a civilised people. A tithe of it cost Great Britain her colonies. There are 5,000 homes in this county—2,900 of them are advertised for sale by the sheriff to meet his tax bills. This house will be sold next court day"
Stoneman looked up sharply. "Sold for taxes?"
"Yes; with the farm which has always been Mrs. Lenoir's support. In part her loss came from the cotton tax. Congress, in addition to the desolation of war, and the ruin of Black rule, has wrung from the cotton farmers of the South a tax of $67,000,000. Every dollar of this
