Experience taught the Cracker to resent intrusion and be suspicious of unfamiliar things and persons, particularly strangers who do not speak his idiom. Anyone approaching with a 'How do you do? is likely to be answered by an eloquent and disdainful expectoration. Generations of contact with hardship and poverty have made him undemonstrative, and he seldom displays any but the strongest emotions. He has appropriated the defensive guile of the Negro and turned it to good account in his dealings. Consequently he drives a hard bargain with soft words. The Yankee is his special prey and to best a Yankee by any device is legitimate. 'In the winter', the cracker boasts, 'we live on the Yankee, and in the summer on fish.' Yet with all his bargaining craft, he is often cheated.
from the 1939 Florida, American Guide Series
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