"Dat was 'long er Marse Mickleborough, boy, but I ain' gwine inter de ens en de outs er dat. Hit mought er been becaze er Marse Mickleborough's fiddle, but I ain' sayin' dat hit wuz er dat hit wuzn't. Dar's some folks dat cyarn' stan' de squeak er a fiddle, en he sutney did fiddle a mont'ous lot. He usen ter beat Miss Sary, too, I hyern tell, jes es you mought hev prognosticate er a fiddlin' man; but she ain' never come home twel atter her pa wuz daid en buried over yonder in Hollywood. Den w'en de will wuz read Marse Bland had lef ev'y las' cent clean away f'om her en de chile. Atter Miss Mitty en Miss Matoaca die de hull pa'cel er hit's er gwine ter some no 'count hospital whar dey take live folks ter pieces en den put 'em tergedder agin." "You mean the little girl won't get a blessed cent?" I asked, and my toes pinched the head of the dandelion until it dropped from its stem. "Ain't I done tole you how 'tis?" demanded the negress in exasperation, rising from her seat on the curbing, "en wat mek you keep on axin' over wat I done tole you?" She went off muttering to herself, while she clenched the stem of her corncob pipe between her toothless gums; and picking up my basket and whistling to Samuel, I walked slowly downhill, with the problem of the future working excitedly in my brain. "A market boy is obliged to be a common boy," I thought, and immediately: "Then I will not be a market boy any longer." So hopeless the next instant did my present condition of abject ignorance appear to me, that I found myself regretting that I had not asked advice of the aged negress who had rested beside me in the shadow of the sycamore. I wondered if she would consider the selling of newspapers a less degrading employment than the hawking of vegetables, and with the thought, I saw stretching before me, in all its alluring brightness, that royal road of success which leads from the castle of dreams. One instant I resolved to start life as a fruit vender on the train, and the next I was wildly imagining myself the president of the Great South Midland and Atlantic Railroad, with a jingling bunch of seals and a gold-headed stick. When at last I reached the Old Market I found that the gayety had departed from it, and it appeared slovenly and disgusting to my awakened eyes. The fruit and vegetables, so fresh and inviting in the early morning, were now stale and wilted; a swarm of flies hung like a black cloud around the joint suspended before the stall of Perkins, the butcher; and as I passed the stand of the fish dealer, the odour of decaying fish entered my nostrils. Was it the same place I had left only a few hours before, or what sudden change in myself had revealed to me the grim ugliness of its aspect? "He's a common boy," the little girl had said of me almost four years ago, and I felt now, as I had felt then, the sting of a whip on my bare flesh at her words. Come what might I would cease to be "a common boy" from that hour.