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When fully opened, the cotton-bolls almost envelop the plant in their snow-white fiber. At a distance a cotton-field ready for the pickers forcibly reminds a Northerner of an expanse covered with snow. Our Northern expression, "white as snow," is not in use in the Gulf States. "White as cotton" is the form of comparison which takes its place.

I felt the bursting cotton-bolls and fingered their soft fiber and fuzzy seeds; I felt the low soughing of the wind through the cornstalks, the silky rustling of the long leaves, and the indignant snort of my pony, as we caught him in the pasture and put the bit in his mouth ah me! how well I remember the spicy, clovery smell of his breath!

Matcito said, "Bring me seven maidens," and they brought him seven maidens; and he said, "Bring me seven baskets of cotton-bolls," and they brought him seven baskets of cotton-bolls; and he taught the seven maidens to weave a magical fabric from the cotton, and when they had finished it he held it aloft, and the breeze carried it away toward the firmament, and in the twinkling of an eye it was transformed into a beautiful full-orbed moon, and the same breeze caught the remnants of flocculent cotton which the maidens had scattered during their work, and carried them aloft, and they were transformed into bright stars.

There was a sprinkling of belated cotton-bolls on the stubbly fields to the right of the road; a few ragged sunflowers were still abloom in the fence corners, where the pokeberries were red-ripe on their tall stalks. "I must lay in some poke-root for Tobe's knee-j'ints," mused Mrs. Cullum, as she turned into the lane which led to her own door-yard.

One forenoon, as she was drawing her weary length along with the accustomed gang, picking the ripe, bursting cotton-bolls, a messenger arrived to say that she was wanted by the master. She almost fainted at the summons. What could he want her for? Surely it was not for good. Was he going to inflict cruelty again as unmerited as it had before been?

It seemed a long monotony of this experience, as he sat listless in the canoe, before a dim whiteness began to appear in a great, unbroken expanse in the gradually enlarging riparian view the glister of the moon on the open cotton-bolls in the fields. The forests were giving way, the region of swamp and bayou.

"All right," said Dumps; and Mrs. Washington, with her son and daughters, was assigned apartments, and Chris was sent up with refreshments, composed of pieces of old cotton-bolls and gray moss, served on bits of broken china.