We went up the verandah stairs of the old inn. It had been the center of the more abundant life when Port Tobacco was a center of trade in early days. A bronze plaque by the door had most of the names that colonial history remembers on it. Washington had dined there, Jefferson, Madison. John Wilkes Booth had dined there, I remembered, but his name wasn’t on the plaque. Now a half dozen farmers from the country were sitting in the old green rocking chairs strewed along the verandah, talking about the price of tobacco. The light in the ceiling was virtually obliterated by mosquitoes and gnats and millers.
Inside a radio bawled swing music, and an old Chesapeake Bay dog was biting the fleas out of his webbed front foot. Two little boys about eleven were mending fishing tackle under a reading
