Right after one Eighth the celebrants began laying by their savings against the coming of the next Eighth. It was Christmas, Thanksgiving, and the Fourth of July crowded into the compass of one day--a whole year of anticipation packed in and tamped down into twenty-four hours of joyous realization. There never were enough excursion trains to bring all those from a distance who wanted to come in for the Eighth. Some, travelers, the luckier ones, rode in state on packed day coaches and the others, as often as not, came from clear down below the Tennessee line, on flat cars, shrieking with nervous joy as the engine jerked them around the sharp curves, they being meantime oblivious alike to the sun shining with midsummer fervor upon their unprotected heads, and the coal cinders, as big as buttons, that rained down in gritty showers. There was some consolation then in having a complexion that neither sun could tan nor cinders blacken. For that one day out of the three hundred and sixty-five and a fourth, the town was a town of dark joy. The city authorities made special provision for the comfort and the accommodation of the invading swarms and the merchants wore pleased looks for days beforehand and for weeks afterward--to them one good Eighth of August was worth as much as six Court Mondays and a couple of circus days. White people kept indoors as closely as possible, not for fear of possible race clashes, because we didn't have such things; but there wasn't room, really, for anybody except the celebrants. The Eighth was one day when the average white family ate a cold snack for dinner and when family buggies went undrivered and family washing went unwashed. On a certain Eighth of August which I have in mind, Judge Priest spent the simmering day alone in his empty house and in the evening when he came out of Clay Street into Jefferson, he revealed himself as the sole pedestrian of his color in sight. Darkies, though, were everywhere--town darkies with handkerchiefs tucked in at their necks in the vain hope of saving linen collars from the wilting-down process; cornfield darkies whose feet were cramped, cabin'd, cribb'd and confined, as the saying goes, inside of stiff new shoes and sore besides from much pelting over unwontedly hard footing; darkies perspiry and rumpled; darkies gorged and leg weary, but still bent on draining the cup of their yearly joy to its delectable dregs. Rivers of red pop had already flowed, Niagaras of lager beer and stick gin had been swallowed up, breast works of parched goobers had been shelled flat, and blade forests of five cent cigars had burned to the water's edge; and yet here was the big night just getting fairly started. Full voiced bursts of laughter and yells of sheer delight assaulted the old Judge's ears. Through the yellowish dusk one hired livery stable rig after another went streaking by, each containing an unbleached Romeo and his pastel-shaded Juliet.