... guardsman continued with a twinkle: Women ain t what they used to be. Times ain t what they used to be, either. All this talk of a depression makes me sick. Nowadays people don t even know what hard times is. Why, when my own mother was left a widow on Ocracoke Island with three children to support baby...

..., the Tar, and the Neuse reach the ocean through Ocracoke In­ let, which was too shallow to float any except small crafts, and the danger of wreckage was so great as to make the cost of lighterage and insurance very high. Consequently the im­ portant trading centres of eastern Carolina were Petersburg...