There is a mountain cool in Old Catawba and the slants of evening. The hill men kill in the mountain meadows--they kill about a fence, a dog, the dispute of a boundary line. They kill in drunkenness or in the red smear of the murder lust.
 But they do not saw off niggers' noses. There is not the look of fear and cruelty in their eyes that the people in South Carolina have.
 Old Catawba is a place inhabited by humble people. There is no Charleston in Old Catawba, and not so many people pretending to be what they are not. Charleston produced nothing, and yet it pretended to so much. Now their pretense is reduced to pretending that they amounted to so much formerly. And they really amounted to very little. This is the curse of South Carolina and its "Southness"--of always pretending you used to be so much, even though you are not now. Old Catawba does not have this to contend with. It has no Charleston and it does not have to pretend. They are small, plain people.
 So Old Catawba is better because it is more "North." Even as a child, George Webber realized that in a general way it was better to be more North than South. If you get too North, it gets no good. Every thing gets frozen and dried up. But if you get too South, it is no good either, and it also gets rotten. If you get too North, it gets rotten, but in a cold, dry way. If you get too South, it gets rotten not in a dry way- which if you're going to get rotten is the best way to get rotten--but in a horrible, stagnant, swampy, stenchlike, humid sort of way that is also filled with obscene whisperings and ropy laughter.
 Old Catawba is just right. They are not going to set the world on fire down there, neither do they intend to. They make all the mistakes that people can make. They elect the cheapest sort of scoundrel to the highest offices they are able to confer. They have Rotary Clubs and chain gangs and Babbitts and all the rest of it. But they are not bad.
 They are not certain, not sure, in Old Catawba. Nothing is certain or sure down there. The towns don't look like New England towns.
 They don't have the lovely white houses, the elm green streets, the sure, sweet magic of young May, the certainty and purpose of it all.