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steps of the stores. It was really a study in--not slow motion--non-motion. Nobody was moving.

We had had telephone calls from the publisher of the Oxford Eagle, the newspaper down there. I had promised the editor that we'd call for her at her office. She wanted to show us some Faulkner items. We weren't due at the Faulkner house until noon for lunch. That was the idea. The services were going to be held at the house right after lunch. We got there about ten in the morning so we had a couple of hours to spare. We asked one of these characters sitting on the steps, “Do you know where the Oxford Eagle is?" He just stared at us. He didn't answer. Neither did a second. Finally, the third one said, “I think it's over there.” We walked around the corner. It was twenty steps from where these fellows were sitting. Of course they knew where it was. It's the daily newspaper there. But they weren't going to have any traffic with Yankees. You could see the enmity in their faces.

The editor turned out to be a very fat lady--a bustling, energetic woman--quite, quite different from what we had expected. She was an obvious go-getter. She showed us little pieces that Bill Faulkner had written. She had all of the files of her Oxford Eagle down to show us things that she had printed, proving that she had recognized and understood the worth of William Faulkner if the rest of this town did not. And she had printed notices at her own expense, saying that “in memory of our great William Faulkner,” every