Book excerpt: A small notch was cut in a smooth white stick for every dime she owed, and a large notch when the dimes amounted to a dollar; for every five dollars a string was tied in the fifth big notch, Cely keeping tally by the knots in her bit of twine; thus, when two strings were tied about the stick, the ten dollars were seen to be an indisputable fact." This interesting method of computing the amount of her debt, whether an invention of her own or a survival of the African life of her parents, served the old negro woman's purpose perfectly; and it illustrates, as well as a score of examples could, the methods of numeration to which the children of barbarism resort when any number is to be expressed which exceeds the number of counters with which nature has provided them.