134 FLORIDA DAYS.

 And so she swings back and forth on the
gate, wondering a little about the dead folks,
planning for thetime she, too, shall "be happy,"
- saying she will certainly go up North and get
" learning,"- unconscious that in a very little
while, five years, perhaps, or six, this keen won-
der and interest, this desire to "know," will
all melt into a calm content with mere bodily
pleasure, chief of which is bodily forgetfulness,
named Religion.

 The negroes have their own churches, in
which, as Julia asserted, distinctions of polite-
ness or fashion are drawn, because they say
"de Lawd comes to us diffv'ntly from white
folks. We-all can't help a showing' we's happy,
as white folks does." So for 'miles through
the barrens, and from up and down the river,
they gather for their strange worship.
 Sometimes one meets, early on a hot Sunday
morning, a whole family, perhaps the grandpar-
ents, as well as the father and mother and chil-
dren, wandering slowly through the deep sand
of a half-broken road towards their church.