1998-02-28,
Natalia Smith, project editor,
finished TEI-conformant encoding and final proofing.

1998-01-20,
Kathleen Feeney
finished TEI/SGML encoding

1998-01-10,
Jill Kuhn
finished scanning (OCR) and proofing.

THE OLD PLANTATION
HOW WE LIVED IN GREAT HOUSE
AND CABIN BEFORE THE WAR

BY

JAMES BATTLE AVIRETT

Author of "Ashby and His Compeers,"
"Who Was the Traitor?" etc.

F. TENNYSON NEELY CO.
NEW YORK, CHICAGO, LONDON

Copyright, 1901
by
JAMES BATTLE AVIRETT.

THIS VOLUME IS GRATEFULLY AND AFFECTIONATELY
DEDICATED
TO THE MEMORY OF THE OLD PLANTER AND HIS WIFE -
THE ONLY REAL SLAVES ON THE OLD PLANTATION
OF MANY OVERGROWN CHILDREN, SERVANTS
ON THE ESTATE, FROM 1817 TO 1865 -
THE FATHER AND MOTHER OF
THE AUTHOR.

INTRODUCTION.

        ACTION and reaction - ebb and flow - seem to be the rule of life in its varied manifestations. Winter and Summer - Seedtime and Harvest, with their death into life - are in striking illustration of this rule. To the benumbing influences of that form of imperialism which swept over Europe, holding down as in a vise all effort at asserted individuality in citizenship, the student of history and its philosophies will recollect, came slow but sure reaction. Coming in form of the French Revolution, it was far, very far, from being an unmixed blessing. It liberated the individual from everybody and everything but himself. This it was powerless to do, because in its chaos it refused to recognize the condition precedent of all healthful life. It turned a deaf ear to the great truth, in its blind worship of Reason, that Order is Heaven's first Law. A power so strong as this social cyclone, working in the orbit of human weakness, could not be confined to France. It overleaped the channel and, though strongly resisted by the conservative forces of Anglo-Saxon England, it has left its influence upon that virile polity which had successfully withstood the mutations of centuries. Intrenching itself in Exeter Hall, London, it threw its

forces across the Atlantic and fortified them in Fanueil Hall, Boston. And thus it came about that it was the benumbing shadows of the French Revolution, in its contempt for law, order and precedent, which left such giants in the state as Mr. Webster, and Bishop Hopkins of Vermont in the Church without a counteracting following. Thus it was that the John Brown Raid, called into being by that bold, bad, strong book, "Uncle Tom's Cabin," proved to be the avant-coureur of the Civil War.

        This fearful struggle between the two sections, North and South, closed in one of its forms many long years ago. Pending this long, dark period of suffering, involving a proud people in some forms of sorrow, keener far than that known to either Poland or Hungary, in the manumission and enfranchisement of a race inferior both from heredity and servility, the South, possessing her soul in patience, has waited. Yes! wretchedly misunderstood, we have waited for the pendulum of public opinion to swing around to our side of the arc. God only knows in what bitterness of heart we have waited. We have waited in full loyalty to the Government, both State and Federal, and though in waiting we may not have grown strong, yet we have waited long enough, under the inspiring example and memory of the Christian Lee at Lexington, Virginia, to be full of hope that the tide is now setting in from the high seas of error, and that the day of our vindication in the world's judgment is nigh at hand.

        Men, very thoughtful men, lacking in no element of manly loyalty to the powers that be, are free to assert that in the reaction which has set in, erroneous views as to the causes which led up to the war, as well as the facts in its conduct, are giving place to the truth. The Supreme Court of the country, in its appellate jurisdiction of last

resort, is affirming and reaffirming the constitutional doctrine of Statehood in its distinct autonomy. Public opinion from the lakes to the gulf, is voicing American utterance as to the superiority of the Caucasian race. From ocean to ocean there is a growing recognition that the tide has turned, in the steadily increasing thrift of the South. And thus it would seem to be that all things come to him who waits.

        The writer of this book, the chaplain on the staff of that matchless Cavalier, Gen. Turner Ashby, Chief of Cavalry under Stonewall Jackson, has patiently waited for nearly forty years to tell his own story. While envy, hatred and malice ruled the hour, he well knew that it would be worse than "Love's Labor Lost," to do anything but wait - bide his time. He has waited until he hears falling from the lips of the distinguished Senator Hoar of Massachusetts largely the same arguments in his opposition to the imperialism at Manila as were employed by Southern senators in the United States Senate in the spring of 1861. He has waited until Colonel Henderson of the British Army, in his "Life of Stonewall Jackson," has placed Lee's lieutenant in the forefront of the world's great captains; and in doing so he has shown in a very striking manner that the appeal, which the silence of the South has slowly brought about, is largely vindicatory of her men and measures. He has waited, until the social conditions at the South before the war are necessarily assuming the misty forms of traditions, and will presently, unless rescued, become to the oncoming generations of the South as mythical as much of the Roman and Grecian stories. He has waited until to wait longer would be treasonable to duty. Having waited long, he now writes in loyalty to past generations of the South - such men

and women as those from whom sprang such pure patriots as Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson, and that incomparable army of Northern Virginia and their comrades in gray all over the Southland.

        In vindicating his people from the ignorant aspersions of "Uncle Tom's Cabin" and kindred exhalations from a distempered brain, he indulges in no criminations or recriminations. To the ex parte statement of this gifted member of a very gifted family, he simply says what the good old Common Law has said in all its wise judgments, "Audi alteram partem" - the wisdom of which legal maxim is further promulged by that higher injunction, "Judge nothing before the time."

        The author, a University man and bred to the law, has given nearly forty years of his life under the auspices of the Episcopal Church. We would, therefore, expect a thoughtful book from him. Born and reared to full manhood on one of the largest plantations on tidewater, North Carolina, one will see that with him is the great advantage of writing as an eyewitness, and not from hearsay or second hand. Urged to write this book by such men of the South as the late United States Senator Vance of North Carolina, and encouraged therein by the Bishop of Central New York and others of his Northern friends, we think he has justified their appreciation of his capacity for this work.

        The reader will observe that he takes hold of none of the many weak threads in the sensational and overwrought story, "Uncle Tom's Cabin," which he might well have done by showing that the worst character in the book is a New Englander, while the best is largely the product of those social forces which Mrs. Stowe is undermining. He simply tells you how the servants on his father's estate

were treated, and unfolds, under that treatment, the gradual uplift of a pagan race to that point of high character which, in the judgment (?) of those in power, fitted them for all the high duties of that citizenship so gracefully adorning such men as Chauncey Depew and Mark Hanna.

        In laying the scene of his recitals on his father's plantation he is fortunate in knowing whereof he speaks, and he does not intimate that the treatment of the servants there was in anywise more humane than elsewhere in the South. In his painstaking portrayal of the social conditions on this plantation, of which he could write both creditably and intelligently, he says: "Ex uno disce omnia."

        Of all the arguments in his contention with Mrs. Stowe and all her kidney, our author uses this one most tellingly. He says if the system of labor on Southern estates was so cruel and barbarous, if the negroes were slaves abject and not servants trusted and well cared for, why was it that when the Southern homes were stripped of their defenders, then in the Confederate armies, the negroes did not reënact the bloody scenes of San Domingo - why did they not rise, with blazing torch in hand, and kill and burn? By so doing, in eight and forty hours they could have broken up the organized Confederate armies in front of Richmond and Atlanta, whose soldiers would have rushed back home to protect their wives and children. And yet, not one single torch of incendiarism was kindled. If any change came, the negroes of the old plantation, conscious of their power, were more loyal and tenderly dutiful than at any time in their history.

        No! no! The truth is, as shown on these pages, the institution had knit the hearts of the two races together too tenderly, in the happy life on the old plantation, to

suggest to either race any such bloody event. The negro of the South to-day knows, that when in trouble his best friend is his old master or his children; and if left alone by those who understand neither race at the South, he would reflect this knowledge in all the relations of life and the race problem of the South would be solved - not in the penalties of odious lynch law, but in the displacement of the fiendish crimes which lead up to it.

HUNTER MCGUIRE, M.D.,
Late Surgeon-in-Chief to General Stonewall Jackson.

RICHMOND, VA.

THE OLD PLANTATION.

CHAPTER I.

                        "Let fate do her worst, there are relics of joy,
                        Bright dreams of the past which she cannot destroy,
                        Which come in the night time of sorrow and care
                        And bring back the features which love used to wear.
                        Long, long be my heart with such memories filled,
                        Like the vase in which roses have once been distilled -
                        You may break, you may shatter the vase, if you will,
                        But the scent of the roses will hang round it still."

        TO THE carefully discriminating mind nothing can be clearer than the following proposition: At Gettysburg, at Chickamauga and elsewhere, every memorial stone, cemented with gratitude for patriotic devotion to country, which has been erected either by Government or individuals, is in strong attestation of the social forces and political conditions which made the armies of the United States such terrible realities.

        At the South in Richmond, Virginia, in Winchester, in Raleigh, North Carolina, in fact all over the broad area embraced by the Confederacy, every effort made to perpetuate the memories of the wearers of the gray - every grassy hillock in God's acre or elsewhere marking the last bivouac of the men who followed Lee, Jackson and others - proclaims in trumpet tones the strength of the silent, subtle forces which underlay the grand struggle for Southern independence, expressed in separate and distinct autonomy.

        It is both fitting and just that these stones should have been so raised on both sides. The carping criticism which would deny to either the precious privilege of honoring its dead is foreign to the patriotic devotion which called

into existence those martial hosts which shook the continent in 1861 and '65. It is eminently natural and proper that both sections, which were lately arrayed in such bitter hostility, should accord to and join with each other in those high and holy observances which perpetuate the fame of those men, now rapidly becoming the property of a common country. The time is nigh at hand when all over this broad land the proud distinction of American citizen, so nobly worn by Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, Forrest, Hampton, et id omne genus, will cause a thrill of high admiration, as well among the dwellers along our northern lakes as in the breasts of those who live amid the savannahs of the South. And this is so rightly, because naturally. It is well nigh axiomatic that a people which does not cherish with loving heart the memory of ancestral virtues will enrich its posterity with scant legacy.

        If then it be true that the memory of our dead is a duty, God imposed and heaven blessed, is it not both wise and profitable to analyze these social forces, which entered so largely into the formation of the character of those noble men, as well in the Army of the Potomac, led by Grant at the close of the struggle, as those who confronted them in battle's stern array for four long years, led by Lee? To the casual, careless observer there was a general sameness in high valor and devotion to duty, as seen in Hancock and Jackson and their followers. To the painstaking, patient student of history and its philosophies differentiations appear, as deep and broad as those which the careful study of Wellington and Napoleon brings to light. If it is true that the child is the father of the man - that we are all of us marvelously molded by the nursery influences at the mother's knee - that men out in the struggle with the world, in after years, are largely the product of hearthstone forces in childhood, then must we seek for some cause at home, in the structure of society, some one or more institutional forces, characterizing the environment and accounting for the difference between the people of the North and South.

        It will not satisfy the alert mind to say that these differences in products, customs, habits, propelling powers in

every-day life - those subtle differences in the mainspring of action - are traceable to differences in the climate. There is much in this. In the economy of nature the sun, with heat and light differing in varying degrees of latitude and longitude, stamps these differences on the orange groves of Florida, full of bloom and beauty, as well as upon the bleak, cold fisheries on the coast of Maine. In the natural world climate is self asserting and supreme. In the higher forms of life, when one passes into the realms of those strong forces swayed by the supernatural, where mind and spirit, acting either separately or conjointly, leave their enduring impress, do we not meet with products which deny and defy the strong influences of climate? It is true that climate has much, but not all to do in making us what we are. Soil and climate influence arm determine avocations or pursuits in life in no small degree. The many and marked points of difference between an agricultural and manufacturing or commercial community determine largely the habits of life, modes of thought and in some sense, the standards of action characterizing the two people of the North and South.

        At one time, in old England and elsewhere in Europe, under the unifying forces of one and the same environment, we were solidly one and the same people. When the exodus from Europe began social differences had already asserted themselves and to such a degree that in many respects the earlier settlers of New England differed largely from those who settled Maryland, Virginia and the Carolinas. It is very difficult to satisfactorily account for these differences. Climate could have had but little to do with those differences which so strikingly obtained between those men who trod the decks of the Mayflower and those who followed Sir Walter Raleigh, that matchless Cavalier, of whom our own Lowell, in his inscription for the Raleigh memorial window in St. Margaret's Church, England, has so beautifully said:

                        "The new world's sons, from England's breast we drew
                        Such milk, as bids remember whence we came;
                        Proud of her past where from our future grew,
                        This window we inscribe with Raleigh's fame."

        The Gallic civilization, repressing and depressing, until at last Spain, in the loss of her American colonies, has nigh disappeared from among the nations of the earth, tells its own story of the influence of government upon the governed. If it be true, that the character of the government asserts itself in the character of its subjects - if, in other words, bad laws make a bad people - we think it equally susceptible of demonstration that whether the word of God occurs in the constitutional charter of its life and liberty or not a people's religion always expresses itself in the character of their government.

        So strikingly true is this that the gifted John S. Pendleton of Virginia was once heard to say that he never left his home in Piedmont, Virginia, and went as United States Minister to Brazil that, after a residence of six months in Rio Janiero, he was not forced to realize that he was a worse man than when he left his home in the United States. So much for the influence of environment and the subtle effects of government and religion on the temper and disposition of a man. When crystallized, these constitute his character. It will appear from this line of thought that when in the early settlement of this country, in the two sets of colonies of New England and Virginia, marked differences were at once recognized - the Puritan and the Cavalier on social lines were far apart. In the former of these two orders of civilization, the Puritan, there were many and marked excellences. The world has rarely, if ever seen among any people a higher standard of general thrift, the outcome largely of their industry and frugality. The marked influence they have exerted on the policy of this country, because of the large wealth they have amassed, is a striking comment on their methods and measures from a material standpoint. Their untiring energy; their calm self-contained equipoise; their ability at all times and under all circumstances to give themselves the full benefit of their resourcefulness; in the main, the absence of both breadth of acres and fertility of their landed estates; the marked intellectuality of many of their public men, anterior to and during the revolution; the deep set influence of the leading

dogma of their religious faith as held by the masterful Jonathan Edward - these and other causes, under the influence of climate, made the New England civilization a wonderful lever in the up-building of the young republic.

        And yet there were some aspects in which this civilization was very weak. It is in a large measure that weakness which is always found in those conditions caused by a dense population, with its numerous large towns and cities, the outcome of manufacturing and commercial enterprises wrought out by energy into a marked success. There is more truth than this materialistic age is willing to allow in the trite old saying, "That man made the town and God made the country." The various forms of social distemper, with which the human race in all ages have been accursed, have had their origin in those congested conditions of life found in thickly settled communities. The old writer was not far away from the truth when he said that cities were ulcers and the smaller towns were boils on the body politic. Men in closely aggregated relations will do and dare (mostly evil things) what they would scarcely think of in segregated homes. The happiest, proudest days of the republic came to us in those healthier conditions of smaller cities, with a scattered population, when the pure air and healthful sunshine of the country life were strong in the coinage, if not in the Spartan simplicity, of those influences; when the criminal dockets of our courts were far shorter and we had no penitentiaries.

        The Cavalier civilization, with its centers in the South, was, in many particulars, different from the Puritan. A close study of history will discover the fact that it brought across the ocean less of that restlessness and more of that restfulness, which naturally inhere in those conditions of respect for authority and precedents than was found among our Northern brethren. The continuity of these conditions accounts for the absence, in all her fair borders, of those "isms" which, like wasteful and destructive parasites, sap the very life out of a people's faith, both in God and in each other.

        One may be on the point of enquiring what was it that

constituted the people of the old South so especially a peculiar people, and, if not strikingly zealous of good works, yet enabled them to exert a strong influence in their day and generation? The ready answer is close at hand. The Southern people, prior to 1865, were a plantation people and were patriarchal, in a sense and to a degree unknown in any part of this country before- or since. What enabled them to lead this order of life? Largely of one blood, living on large estates in the employment of their African servants, there was among them, in the absence of manufacturing and large commercial centers, that freedom from restless change, which can alone be hoped for in any community in the perfect absence of those sharp antagonisms between Capital and Labor. At the South these two mighty giants, whose wrestlings have aforetime vexed governments and overturned empires, were at peace. And this was so because, to put it epigrammatically, our Capital was our Labor and our Labor was our Capital. Hence it was, in the old South, we were enabled to present that enviable condition of fixedness and stability which came of families living for generations with their servants on the same ancestral estates. With us our household gods were not often removed and, in consequence, there attached to our lares and penates that peculiar sanctity and reverence, which gave rise to that blessed form of friendliness, which will be long, long remembered, as the old-fashioned, openhearted Southern hospitality.

        The object of this volume, now in hand, is to describe one of these old plantations - its occupants, white and colored - the exact relations between the two races; the conditions under which they served each other; the character of the houses in which they both dwelt; what manner of food they ate; their daily duties and amusements; their religion; in fine, to draw from memory a picture as an eye witness, as a participant in and a creature of those social forces which made the old South a power in the land. Gladly would I draw such a truthful, detailed and minute picture, as will teach the young people of this and oncoming generations, both in the North and South, what

manner of men and women lived south of the Susquehanna river prior to the late war between the States.

        This, to the writer, in his old age, will be a labor of love. Here and there he may seem to dwell on some feature of his recital with great minuteness. If so, it is because in no portion of the world has there ever been, or will there ever be again, such happy social conditions as formerly existed in the old South on the old plantation.

        Were it not that the present writer has peculiar advantages in treating his subject - himself in every fibre of his organism, mental, moral and physical, the creation, the outcome of the plantation life - he might draw back and remain silent in the presence of the deep prejudice and painful ignorance still in existence against the institutional life of his people. However, he must write. He must tell his own story and put forth a friendly, if it be a weak hand, to rescue from oblivion the story of the old plantation life. It is now to many people very nebulous, and will soon become so very misty as to be mythical. He is prompted to write in vindication of his own people, in the knowledge of the fact that on a large plantation, with hundreds of servants, his father and mother were the only two slaves upon it. Years ago the writer's old friend, the distinguished late Senator Z. B. Vance, that wonderful tribune of the people, urged him to do what he is now attempting - saying that only the product of plantation life could tell the story authentically, as an eye witness, and not writing from hearsay or second hand.

        Recently the writer has received letters from President Alderman, and ex-President Battle of the University of North Carolina, as well as from such distinguished citizens of the South as Dr. Hunter McGuire of Virginia; Messrs. Graham Daves, James A. Bryan, Oscar W. Blacknall, Generals William H. Cheek, and Julian S. Carr; Rev. Doctors Hufham and Yates of North Carolina - all urging him to carry his book on to completion. Obliged, after a ministry of nearly forty years, to take some rest, in consequence of failing health, the writer hopes he has elected wisely to rest by changing his labor. He wishes

most heartily that he were younger and could bring to the discharge of these high duties the verve and élan, the vigor of more meridian powers; but, if much younger, he would have missed the boon of a plantation education under the purer and happier days of the Republic, when citizenship at the South was happily exempt from those saddening forms of change and decay which, in these latter days, have come from bad politics and worse statesmanship growing out of a cheapened and debauched ballot. It saddens one to attempt to realize how depressed our own Washington, Hamilton, Jay, Jefferson and Madison would become could they come back to the once familiar scenes, which they glorified by their high type of patriotic devotion, and witness for themselves the painful decadence of citizenship, as well at the North by reason of foreignism as at the South because of the Ethiopian ballot.

        And yet we must not despair of the Republic. In no country, in the world's history, have the vital forces been quite so strong as in these United States. There is a virgin freshness, combined with a masculine strength, in this young land of ours which will not tolerate the baneful forms of pessimism, and which, if not inspiring, at least suggests that he is the true friend of the country whose form of optimism urges one to work on, to hope on, for the best. We are far too young as a people to have so far crystallized in habits and views (which if wrong) as to be beyond the reach of remedy. We older Southern people are proud of and thankful for the blessed days of the old South. We will endeavor to teach our offspring to cherish the memories and emulate the virtues of the ante-bellum civilization. Full well we know that no portion of human history has been more ignorantly misunderstood or painfully misjudged than the slaveholding era of the South. It has been more bitter than defeat itself to realize with sickening certainty the fact that until recently we have been denied the privilege of setting the world right in the matter of the causes which led up to, as well as the conduct of the struggle, whose epitaph the major part of Christendom would write in the words: "Lost Cause." Second, sober thought, governmental experiment

in heretofore untried suffrage problems - the cold hard facts of nearly four decades in our history are bringing on marked changes in the opinion of very many thoughtful people. Some of the very best thinkers, men enlightened by the culture of the philosophies of history are already declaring that it was only in the matter of physical force and results that General Lee surrendered to General Grant. That in the matter of Caucasian supremacy and statehood to us of the South it was not a lost cause, because:

                        "If lost, 'twas false
                        If true, it was not lost."

        The Supreme Court of the United States, by recent decisions, is maintaining the doctrine of the States with separate autonomy. Public opinion, North and South, is so dealing with the vexed race problem as to emphasize the supremacy of the white man. The signs of the times are hopeful, when, though sad the necessity, Senator Hoar of Massachusetts, in antagonizing imperialism at Manila and elsewhere, is using largely the same arguments which Mr. Jefferson Davis employed in justifying the action of the South in 1860 and '61, in the Senate of the United States, just prior to the secession of the Southern States.

CHAPTER II.

        WHEN one crosses out of the little State of Delaware into the historic commonwealth of Maryland, looking to the south and west, there stretches away before him a magnificent domain. Temperate in climate, diversified in soil, richly embellished with hill and dale, in many respects it is unequaled by any in the world. It is traversed by the Alleghany and Blue Ridge mountains, with foothills which gradually lose themselves in the sea coast counties, and is watered by such beautiful rivers as will come to mind when you think of the Potomac, the James, the Roanoke, the Savannah, the Alabama, the Rio Grande and the lordly Mississippi. These rivers drain large valleys and water sheds, whose soil in many portions rivals the fertility of the Nile. This section is blessed indeed by a loving Providence in those innumerable medicinal springs, whose waters are given for the healing of earth's diseased children. Surely when one has familiarized himself with the picturesque valley of the Shenandoah, in dear old Virginia; or has allowed his eye to sweep over the blue-grass region of Kentucky; or has drunk in the beauties of that famous cloudland country in the vicinity of Asheville, in western North Carolina - where the laughing waters of the beautiful French Broad (mirroring the forms of the grandest mountains east of the incomparable Rockies), go on their way rejoicing to tell it out to the sunlit Gulf of Mexico - that here, in the old Southland, is the Eldorado of the world. Surely when one has done this he feels like exclaiming, as does the Neapolitan when he looks upon

Naples, "Behold this fair land and then die, for there is nothing more beautiful to be seen on earth."

        It does not lie in the province of these short annals to indulge in any elaborate description of this famous section of our country, which has proven such an important factor in the rapid development of our young republic. And yet, common justice demands that something should be said of its wonderful products, notably so of its splendid product of noble men and fair women, which has put the world in love with the very finest type of Anglo-Saxon civilization. Think of her forests, under the shade of whose oaks the Druids might worship, and under whose widespreading beech trees Virgil's fair Amaryllis might have been wooed and won. Think of her grand old hickories, graceful ashes, and above all those lordly pines, in whose branches the wind is ever sighing out the lullaby of old ocean; her magnificent magnolias, from whose flower-swayed branches, our incomparable mocking-bird, night and day, is pouring out his roundelay of love, in notes sweeter far than these of the Oriental nightingale.

        Time fails one in telling fully of the wealth, both of the useful and the beautiful, which a beneficent Creator has given us in these widespread forests of the South. Would you speak of flowers? Nowhere on God's green earth does the rich, blushing rose (that century-sceptered queen of lovely Flora) reach higher perfection than in the flower gardens of Raleigh, North Carolina, or in those of Pensacola, Florida. All of our Southern flowers, which represent those exact adjustments of heat and light involved in the higher ranges of color and perfume, find here their fullest requirements. Would you speak of fruits? Think of the luscious Georgia peach, the vermeille on whose cheek equals that of the lovely damsels who pluck and eat them; the melons, the apples, the pears, the nectarines, the figs, the apricots and the luscious grapes, equal to Eschol's clusters, and her oranges as well - in fine, of all her fruits; and while your mouth waters say that nature in dear old Southland has done her best. Would you like nuts with your coffee after dinner? We have walnuts of both varieties, the pecan, the hickory nut,

and the more delicate scaly or shell bark, the famous peanut, and even the delicate, dainty, little grass nut of the well appointed Southern garden.

        Would you know how it comes about that the cuisine of Baltimore and New Orleans is the wonder and delight of the world? Associate in your mind the fact that "all flesh is grass" with a fine sirloin of blue-grass beef in the South and the noble saddles of Southdown mutton (fatted on this same grass and flavored by browsing the sheep on the budding twigs in our mountain lots), and you will cease to wonder why both New Yorkers and Philadelphians go to the White Sulphur and Capon Springs of Virginia, not only to rest, but to laugh and grow fat as well.

        Would you tell me that the perfection of fish is found in the markets of Southern Europe, or to be had at Delmonico's in New York, or in Boston? This is not so. Grant that the wealthy people of the large Northern cities demand that the "pick" of the Chesapeake or Albemarle "catch" shall be carried to them. The power of wealth is very great, but it cannot control nature. The fine shad and other varieties are carried, but in the carriage they lose their finest flavor, and thus the millionaire feeds, in some sense, upon stale fish. When you have eaten the planked shad in full view of the lovely Chesapeake Bay, or have been so fortunate as to enjoy the pompino, that perfection of the Gulf waters, at the old Saint Charles in New Orleans, you will understand how kindly in her dispensations dear old dame nature has been, and still is, to her sunburnt, unconventional Southern children, far away from Gotham and "the hub of civilization," so called. Before passing away from the Southern products, let us not forget her canvasback duck nor her diamondback terrapin. We will not discount that miracle of delicate flavor and toothsomeness, the oysters of our Southern waters, the perfection of which is claimed in the "Broad Creekers" and the "New River catch" of the North Carolina market. At the South, notably so in those blessed days before the flood of 1861 and 1865, our very finest product was the old-fashioned ham of the

Southern plantation. More time would be required than can be given it in the description of those conditions which lead up to this time-honored, ancestral essential to a good dinnner in its full excellence. In the old South no dinner was in any sense complete without that lordly dish, which always confronted the mistress of the plantation at the head of the table, after the soup and fish had been discussed. Later on we will take a slice out of that old ham. Just now we must go on.

        The old South was essentially a people of plantations, as distinguished from farms. Of cities there were but few, and these not strikingly large. Baltimore, New Orleans, St. Louis and Charleston were among the largest; and while there were other smaller cities and towns - in wealth, in political power, in social influence, the most attractive feature of our life - the strength and the charm were in the country. This was so because the South was strikingly an agricultural people. From the greater fixedness and certainty of their possessions, in broad acreage and numerous servants, few of her people had been stung by the gadfly of millionarism, more poisonous than the asp which sucked the blood from Cleopatra's purple veins. They were content to enjoy the profits from producing their various staples of cotton, rice, sugar, tobacco, naval stores and lumber; they were content to live and let live, in doing but very little to build up their commerce or manufactories, but allowing others to transform their products for the markets of the world and thus grow rich.

        Pending this long period of unwritten agreement between the North and the South, the former producing largely and the latter manufacturing the products of the United States, all Europe stood in wonder at the rapid development in both sections. The perfect comity between the two demonstrated to the world, in far more forceful form than dear old Æsop embodied it in his striking fable of the bundle of sticks, that "in union is strength." Saddening indeed is the fact that during a period of national dementia sullen sectionalism sapped the Union of strength to such a degree as to almost make the once fair

young republic the laughing-stock of the world. Fortunately reaction supervened in the return of that brother hood, which indeed is the procuring cause of our present colossal proportions.

        Having already glanced at the extent of territory embraced in the old South, with her varied agricultural products, her untold riches in climate and soil, her vast resources in forest wealth and inexhaustible mines of coal and iron, together with those rich contributions both of comfort and wealth which her waters gave as they teemed with life, there is something still which must be said of the richest of all her gifts to national wealth - her population - the men and women who dwelt upon their ancestral estates.

        The time is past for any defense of African slavery - an institution which some say cannot be defended. But it must be allowed that its practical working at the old South among our ancestors was such, in the language of Mr. Henry Grady, "as to challenge and hold our loving respect." In no time in the history of our race has there ever been seen a peasantry so happy, and in every respect so well to do, as the negro slaves of America. We are to indulge in no criminations or recriminations as to who introduced them into this country. We are not now to inquire who they were who held so tenaciously to the carrying trade of these poor pagans and (in many cases) cannibals from the coast of Africa, through the ports, first of the colonies and then of the United States, into the landed estates of this country, North and South. We are not now to tell it out to the world, that family secret of ours, as to what was the basis of some of the largest fortunes still in existence among us. We shall be silent as to what portion of this country was represented in Congress by those favoring the extension or the abolition of the slave trade. We do not propose to allow our family soiled linen to be washed in the front yard of the world's unfriendly criticism. This would argue the absence of good taste and gentle breeding and might provoke an unpleasant state of affairs. But, guarded as we may be in keeping our family secrets, it is both curious and profitable, if

sometimes humiliating, to note how murder will out. Lynx-eyed history is both persistent and insistent in gathering up and gazetting facts. Among the ancients Cupid was represented as blind, while Justice always wore a bandage over her fair eyes. In this electric age history courageously and successfully insists upon having her telescope for long ranged views of the truth, while she will not be denied her microscope for more minute investigations.

        We are quite willing to leave the position which our forefathers at the South occupied on this social question to the solemn, God-fearing utterances of history. We would simply say that the civilized world stood amazed at the social conditions at the South during the eventful years of 1861 and '65. These slaves (so called) - these servants - during that time with loving fidelity guarded the homes of their masters, absent in many cases with those armies that barred their way to freedom. This condition of affairs has been so happily (because forcibly, truthfully) presented by a distinguished son of Georgia, Mr. Grady, that extracts are here made from his brilliant, brave-hearted paper.

        "If 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' had portrayed the rule of slavery at the South rather than the rarest exception, not all the armies that went to the field could have stayed the flood of rapine and arson and pillage that would have started with the first gun of the Civil War. Instead of that, witness the miracle of the slave, in loyalty to his master, closing the fetters upon his own limbs - maintaining and defending the families of those who fought against his freedom - and at night, on the far-off battlefield, searching among the carnage for his young master, that he might lift the dying head to his breast and bend to catch the last word to the old folks at home; so wrestling in the meantime in agony and love that he would lay down his life in his master's stead. History has no parallel to the faith kept by the negro in the South during the war. Often five hundred negroes to a single white man, and yet through these dusky throngs the women and children walked in safety, and the unprotected home rested in peace. Unmarshaled, the black

battalion moved patiently to the fields in the morning to feed the armies their idleness would have starved, and at night gathered anxiously at the great house to hear the news from master, though conscious that his victory made their chains enduring. Everywhere humble and kindly. Everywhere the bodyguard of the helpless. Everywhere the rough companion of the little ones. The silent sentry in his lowly cabin. The shrewd counsellor. And when the dead came home, a mourner at the open grave. A thousand torches would have disbanded every Southern army, but not one was lighted. When the master, going to the war in which slavery was involved, said to his slave, 'I leave my home and loved ones in your charge,' the tenderness between the man and master stood disclosed. Its patriarchal features were revealed."

        The Southern people are daily thanking this golden-mouthed son of Georgia for this and many other matchless utterances in Boston and New York, as well as for his daily teaching at home, in which he taught each section by no false position, but by simply presenting the truth in naked majesty, to love each other back into lasting peace. Would God had spared him a few more years in his bright and beautiful life, to have beheld with his own eyes the fine fruitage of his well-nigh divine teachings, inspired by the matchless example and vicarious suffering of Lee at Lexington, Virginia, whom his father loved and followed in the Southern army confronting Grant.

        Mr. Grady is right. It is simply impossible for any Northern man, with his hired servants, to comprehend the facts of the patriarchal relation between master and servant, with its friendliness and sympathy of the old plantation life.

        If one spoke the truth of the régime, in painting the picture of the servants on these estates, trusted because open hearted, sympathetic and full of innocent gossip and comradeship, he was once accounted either as a dreamer or as one who drew on his fancy for his facts. But, thank God, this day is passing away. As well under the shadow of Exeter Hall, London, as that of Fanueil Hall, Boston,

on both sides of the Atlantic, the representatives of the Anglo-Saxon civilization are reaching out for the truth in a way and to a degree that happily characterizes the closing years of the nineteenth century.

        We wish to speak of those social forces which were so actively at work in the South before the war. There must have been some immense force in them to work out such remarkable results, although beleaguered within their own area by the suspicion and the hostility of the outside world. What are the facts? Numerically inferior to the North for the first sixty-four years of the republic, the South furnished the President for fifty-two years. When Great Britain undertook to drive us from the high seas, before our beard had grown, the South, in the United States Senate, forced the war of 1812, with only five Northern senators aiding her. Who commanded our armies at the battle of New Orleans? General Andrew Jackson, a Carolinian. Who were in the lead, when Louisiana, with more than one million square miles of territory, was acquired? Do we not owe the acquisition of Florida to the same source? Who opposed the war with Mexico, by which the vast empire of Texas and New Mexico, together with California, were added to our country? Northern statesmen. Who built the first important railway in this country? Public spirited and wealthy men in Carolina. Where was the first college for girls built but in dear old Georgia, which sent the first steamship across the ocean from the beautiful little city of Savannah? In the world of beautiful nature around us who has gone as deep in her secrets among the birds of the air as our own Audubon? Who has given the commerce of the world such rich instruction in the laws of the winds and the tides and currents of old ocean, mapping and charting them, as Virginia's gifted son, Matthew Fontaine Maury? High up on the roll of the world's great surgeons whose names stand higher than those of Sims and McDonald? To whom in the dark valley of the world's great suffering are we so much indebted as to Crawford Long of Georgia? Whence come John Marshall and Roger Taney, to contest with Judge Story of New England the highest honors and

the proudest fame on the Supreme Court Bench of the United States, but from their Southern homes? Who emulated, if they did not surpass, Daniel Webster in the United States Senate, with magnetic thrill and irresistible, inexorable logic? Mr. Clay of Kentucky, and Mr. Calhoun and Mr. Hayme of South Carolina.

                        "Read their history in the nation's eyes,"

        swaying senates and prolonging the life of the republic! These were a part (and only a part) of the rich contributions which the old South gave to the young nation in trust for the world. And while she was active in doing so much for the whole country she was amassing a wealth which, per capita, was greater than that of any other portion of the Union, save, perhaps, that of little Rhode Island. In 1861, if the erring sisters had been allowed to go in peace, was not the disturbing question of the hour: Whence is to come national revenue? Had not this very consideration much to do with the policy of coercion?

        "Thus," said Mr. Lincoln, "if we allow the Southern States to depart from the Union, where shall we get the money with which to carry on the Government?"

        Those of us who have survived our fondest hopes in many directions are warranted in fearing that the goose which laid the golden egg has been killed. Certainly this matter of finance is one of the vexed problems now confronting us; certainly it does appear that the world or at least our part of it, is not growing wiser as it grows older, in many departments of most useful information. But to resume. Let it be said that the presentation of the above facts, embodying the rich contributions to national greatness in most vital, essential particulars which were made by the old South, is very gladly presented. In justifying our ancestral pride it emboldens us in acquainting our children with their rich inheritance, and thus serves to keep erect among us high standards of duly to self and country. It disproves and forever disposes of the loose assertion that the Southern civilization, shadowed by and the product of the institution of slavery, was incapable of high achievements and largely inferior to that

of our Northern brethren. It further shows that these Caucasians dwelling on the plantations of the old South, in their guardianship over the millions of negroes on their estates must, in the main, have treated their servants very kindly. How else can you account for the absence of crime during the war and the presence of such fine forms of mutual kindness among the older persons of both races, as we know exists to this day? It can be emphatically declared, and is often exemplified, that we at the South, the old plantation people and their descendants, do love the race that held the plow which made the corn that fed the cows which gave the milk that we drank in childhood. It is painful to know how difficult it is to induce those foreign to our condition fully to realize this as a fact, but we, and the negroes themselves, know that it is so; and we, for the present, must be contented. More light is coming in. Booker Washington in Alabama, and others like him, will go on vindicating the truth of what has been so admirably said on this point by such thoughtful, discriminating men of the South as the late ex-Senator Vance of North Carolina and Mr. Henry Grady of Georgia.

        Before leaving this subject it must be allowed one to say in regard to the state of society in the South before the war, that the social conditions in the same community have largely changed. It is said of Mr. Webster that in introducing that charming typical Southerner, the Honerable George E. Badger, United States Senator of North Carolina, to one of his Boston friends, he employed these words:

HON. RUFUS CHOATE:

"Dear Sir - Permit me to introduce to you the Honorable George E. Badger of North Carolina, your equal and my superior.

Yours truly, DANIEL WEBSTER.

        Thus you will see that in this representative Southerner Mr. Webster recognized the rich product of the South. Yes, say what you may of it, there was an engaging race in the chivalry that tempered even quixotism with dignity, in the piety which saved master and slave alike, in the charity that boasted not, in honor held above

estate, in the hospitality that neither condescended nor cringed, in frankness and heartiness and wholesome comradeship, in the reverence paid to womanhood and the inviolable respect in which woman was held, the civilization of the old slave régime in the South has not been surpassed and perhaps will not be equaled among men.

        Whence came these fine conditions? We of the old South cannot be blamed (for we are not wrong) in saying that, as there was no hurry among us in those days, no need of haste, men took time to be truly conservative and fastened the taproot of their every-day life deep down into the soil which was pressed by the foot-prints of George Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Henry, and such others as gave dignity and honor to American citizenship. These worthies were all slave holders, as were Scott and Taylor, and a whole host of others whose devotion to the institutional life of this country gives lustre to many pages of American history.

        But it must be borne in mind that the limited space of this volume demands that we hurry on and drop this vein of thought for the present. Yes, drop this vein of thought; not, however, in the sense illustrated by this anecdote. The proprietor of the leading hotel in Savannah, Georgia, ordered old Pompey to bring up on his shoulder from the wharf to the hotel a large sea turtle. Pompey was obeying the order, as with bent shoulders he made his way up the street, the turtle kicking out with his four feet in as many directions. A ventriloquist on the opposite side of the street took in the situation and undertook to have some fun at the old darky's expense. In the most sepulchral tone he could possibly command he threw his voice over the street and, as from the poor turtle, asked, "When is you gwine to drap me?" Instantly, as the turtle went down with a tremendous crash upon the hard pavement, jarring him as though he had been struck by the tail of a whale, the old darky called out, "I'se gwine to drap you right now," and away he went at the most rapid rate, with coat tails flying out as danger signals, in superstitious fright and flight. In the childlike simplicity of the old plantation negro how much there is both amusing and attractive.

CHAPTER III.

        IN THE South the crops were so various that in no season, however disastrous to some, was there ever a marked failure in all. Each one of these staples had its own peculiar belt or habitat, requiring different modes of culture and special adaptation of soil and climate for its highest perfection. Thus, in the fine wheat lands of Maryland, Virginia and Kentucky, one never saw a field of cotton or sugar cane. Yet all of these crops were the products of the same labor, and while there were peculiar features in the plantation life of the Gulf States' planters, yet there was such a general sameness that in minute description of an estate in North Carolina one furnishes a satisfactory account of them all. In the older States of the South, notably so in Virginia and the Carolinas, there was a more pronounced form of the patriarchal features of the system than was found in the younger States, where the commercial features of the institution more largely obtained. It was not an unusual condition of affairs in the older States that the servants employed came down with broad acreage from father to son for generations. These older States were more influential in giving character to the younger communities of the old South. It was notably so in 1837 and afterwards, because the tide of emigration set out from the Potomac and James Rivers' Valley about that time. We shall select a plantation in North Carolina, the description of which will best illustrate the most healthful forms of the relation of master and servant.

        Wherever the uplift of education has been felt there

is some one spot where the well-nigh magical influence of home has asserted its power. Some one spot there is to us all where the sky is a little bluer, where the grass is a little greener, where the light of the stars is a little softer, where the song of the birds is sweeter and the south-west breezes of the early spring are much softer; while the perfume of the flowers is far sweeter - in fine, where heaven is a little nigher. That spot of earth is one's own home. It is the presence of the mother there that consecrates it. It may not be especially attractive to others, but it is all the world to you.

        The plantation selected for description here is the author's old home and the home of his forefathers for generations. Many in North Carolina, in breadth of acreage and varied attractiveness, may have been of greater marketable value and far more desirable. The author knows this best and thinks it a fair type of the old plantations of the South, and, therefore, for various reasons, it has been selected as the scene of the recitals, descriptions, events and conditions of life embodied in the life on Southern estates before the years of 1861 and '65. It is situated in the old county of Onslow, named for Sir Arthur Onslow, Speaker of the British House of Commons. The plantation was known as "The Rich Lands" and was situated immediately on the old stage-road which led from New Berne to Wilmington, two old colonial towns, about one hundred miles apart, in the tide water section of the blessed old State of North Carolina. This estate lay on the west side of a very remarkable stream known as New River, which had its source and outlet in the same county. From its mouth in the Atlantic Ocean up to a short distance from the village of Jacksonville, the county seat, the beautiful body of water, known as "the river," was, in truth, in breadth, in depth and other particulars very like an arm of the sea. Rarely, if ever, has the eye of man elsewhere drunk in the beauties of nature as so strikingly presented by this lovely estuary or bay. Something like it is to be seen along the St. Mary's River in lower Maryland. Some of the views of the Hudson remind you of it. All in all, however, the writer has never

seen anything quite so beautiful. It was some twenty miles in length and several miles in breadth, with an expanse of water strikingly lovely.

        One must take into consideration the fact that this beautiful body of salt water constituted the abundant storehouse of nature, from which were taken some of the most valued features of table comfort and luxury. Its waters teemed with the various varieties of fine fish found in this latitude, among which were the mullet, the sea trout, the sheepshead, the flounder, the croaker or pig ash, with others not a few. These fine fish were there in great abundance. In their season were to be had many varieties of water fowl, ducks, wild geese and swans. The ducks were very numerous and of the varieties found in that famous storehouse, the Chesapeake Bay. Never in this country has the writer tasted a more delicious breakfast dish than the blue winged teal of these waters, while the blackheads, mallards, and the variety which we call the canvasback were found in large numbers. Rich and abundant as were all these contributions to the planter's comfort, none surpassed the shellfish found so abundantly where this beautiful inland salt lake joined the sea. The oysters were larger and fatter than the celebrated "Blue Points" of the New York market, and in delicacy of flavor quite equaled the "Morris Cove" specimen of the Philadelphia Club House. The writer married a Virginia girl and has often feasted on the fine oysters of the Norfolk and Suffolk markets (and they are certainly very fine), but, apart from prejudice or predilection, he is free to say that the "New River" oyster of the old plantation days in all the finer forms of delicacy and flavor were the equals of any bivalves he has ever enjoyed. At Delmonico's in New York or at the old Hygeia at Old Point Comfort nothing of the oyster family surpassed them. The very largest and fattest oysters in the country are to be had in the Mobile and New Orleans' markets. Those graced the beautiful tables of the old St. Charles and St. Louis of the latter city in the good old ante-bellum days; but, while they were as large as the hand of the creole beauties at the table and as white with fat as

the snowy arms of these beautiful women, they lacked the peculiar, dainty, salty flavor of the "New River" oyster. They were much larger, much fatter, these bonseceurs of the Gulf waters, but were far too fresh, lacking in saltiness, and this for a very obvious cause. The large inland seas, the Alabama and Mississippi Rivers, poured such quantities of fresh water into the gulf as to lower the standard of saltiness of this oyster's habitat; but though in return they brought down such myriads upon myriads of animalcule as to make these oysters of the Gulf as longs as an ordinary knife of the tea table, as broad as a man's four fingers and looking like great strips of white pork, yet they were not comparable in flavor to the New River oyster of the North Carolina markets. In addition to these toothsome oysters of this remarkable river, there was an inexhaustible supply of crabs, both stone and soft shell, while clams, scallops, and shrimps were to be had for the taking. In addition to the above named comforts, which, in the good old golden days before the war had become to the planters and their families actual indispensable necessaries, both the bathing and sailing were most excellent. The writer goes back in fond recollection to many sunny hours of the charming sailing or yachting parties over these beautiful waters, as fair and lovely as those in the Bay of Naples. In these we were often joined by the charming people of Col. Edward Montford's family or those from Paradise Point, in both of which such sweet hospitality obtained.

        The soil along the shores of the lovely inland lake, while lacking in the greater fertility of the plantations higher up the river, was kindly in many of the wise bestowments of nature, and the planters lived in great comfort and luxury. The strong, beating tidal pulse of old ocean had not the power to force its sway higher up in New River than just below Jacksonville, the county seat. Here the tide ended. Higher up the river, narrowing rapidly, you came to some of the finest agricultural country in this State. In the center of this lovely section, on the west bank of the river, in the form of a horseshoe in the bend of this beautiful stream, lay the far-famed "Rich Lands"

estate. As it lay there with its broad, fertile acreage embellished here and there with the largest hickory trees the writer has ever seen, it stretched away on either side of the stage road running from Wilmington, fifty-eight miles away, to New Berne, just forty-two miles distant. This road, running from north-west to south-east in almost an air line for something over two miles, cuts this estate in two parts of almost equal extent. The writer loves to shut his eyes, close his ears, go back in fond memory, and think of it as the most beautiful plantation his eye ever feasted upon. Some of the estates in the Mohawk Valley are very lovely, and lovely homes on fine farms are to be seen in the far-famed Shenandoah valley of Virginia.

        The American may be justly proud of his country, capable of furnishing such landed estates as are to be seen in the blue-grass country of Kentucky and the more fertile sections of Alabama, in the canebrake country between the Alabama and Tombigbee Rivers. These are all very fine, as is that far-famed section of Bayou Teche in Louisiana. But this plantation of which we are speaking - in all the elements of fertility, lay of the land, readiness of renovation, variety of products, proximity to market, freedom from wasting diseases, the ease with which a fine table could be maintained winter and summer, the excellence of its roads, its inexhaustible forests of fine wood, hard and soft - in the judgment of those entitled by both education and travel to an opinion in such matters was, in the early fifties, under the management of the proprietor, the father of the present writer, one of the finest estates in the South. The reader will concur, when we go into details. It embraced more than twenty-five hundred acres of arable land, while to the west and south, adjoining, there extended a magnificent domain of more than twenty thousand acres of heavily timbered land, comprising the turpentine orchards of this estate. The plantation proper was almost as level as a parlor floor, save where one beautiful stream, Chapel Run, cuts its way through the fields as it went on its way with sparkling waters to the river. The geological

formation was that of limestone, not the hard, granite-like, blue limestone of the Shenandoah valley; this was the softer gray limestone, easily disintegrating, and from its rich percentage in the carbonate of lime, when applied, readily restoring fertility to the soil, reduced by heavy cropping. The beautiful stream spoken of, Chapel Run, fed by innumerable springs, some of them in view and others hid away in its banks and bed, was a bold, strong creek, spanned by several rustic bridges, ornamented by vines, which were a very great convenience in going to and from the plantation work, and notably so in harvesting the crops. Its head waters were strong, unfailing springs, a little west of the plantation, out on the eastern fringe of the turpentine orchard. The writer, in boyhood, on Saturdays and other holidays was never so happy as when fishing in its glassy pools, as limpid as Lake Killarney in old Ireland. They abounded in small though very delicious fish of the perch family, commonly called pan or the breakfast fish of the planter's table.

        Do you see that fine old beech tree standing on the bank of this stream, just before it disappears and goes into its subterranean channel, which some convulsion of nature has made for it? What a splendid old tree it is! How stately its trunk, how umbrageous its branches, how smooth its white bark? What rough, hieroglyphic sign are those, well-nigh grown over now, but once cut deep into the soft bark of this lovely tree, as the young fisher man stopped his sport and with pocket knife engrave the following letters, "E. P. F.;" while higher up, the work of an older brother, could be read the unmistakable initial letters of one of dear old Carolina's beautiful daughters, "A. R. C. D." Thus we see that Cupid was busy then with the sons of the old planter. Those who wore the names outlined by those initials have passed away, but to him who alone survives, the younger brother, the present writer of these pages, their sweet memory will outlast the famous old beech tree and will go on with him into eternity, forever blessed. Do you see that large persimmon tree standing out there in the open field some hundred yards or more from the banks of the creek?

Yes; why do you ask the question? Because it has connected with it some high fun of possum hunting, with dear old Ben and his dogs, "Rattler" and "Spunk." Maybe it would be well to stop my plantation reminiscences for a little while and give you a sure enough possum story? What do you say? I do not know how the reader will like it. In these times of the bicycle and the fame of Newport and Narragansett Pier, times have so changed. Nevertheless, here goes for the possum story. Those who prefer to do so can skip it and indulge in reading one of Zola s elevating (?) stories.

        On one of the Carolina plantations before the war lived an old darky named Hannibal, commonly known as "Uncle Han," whose proud fame as a possum hunter or a trapper was well known on the plantations on both sides of the river. He was very lucky with "varmints," as the negroes said. On this particular occasion he had gone to his trap and found that it had been robbed, but he set it and carefully baited it and went to another trap higher up the creek. Here he was delighted to find he had caught a fine large animal, well fatted on persimmons, which the early frosts had mellowed and sweetened. In less time than is required to tell of it he had, with one blow of his axe, cut down a young ash and with the possum's tail held fast in the split of the stick, thrown over his shoulder, he was making his way home, to reach which he was obliged to pass by a little country store where whiskey was sold. Uncle Han's joy over the prospect of the oncoming feast was so great that he could not pass that store without stopping both to wet his whistle and to fill his "tickler." Thus supplied, homeward he went and, though it was late, he soon had the possum on a spit before a roaring fire. Now and then the old man would wet his whistle from the contents of that bottle. Soon, between the heat of the fire, the soothing influence of the whiskey and the day's work, he was deep down in an old split-bottomed chair, fast asleep. Aunt Rachel, his wife, had gone to bed some time before. Still the old man slept on. A little blue-black negro in the neighborhood, named Henry, worried the very life out of Uncle

Han by robbing his traps, and other deviltries. He had gone to the old man's trap that very night and saw from the hair still sticking to it that Uncle Han had been lucky. He followed on. He came to the old man s cabin and, through a crack in the wall, he took in the situation There was the fat possum roasting away before the fire; there sat, or rather half way reclined, Uncle Han in his chair, pretty far gone from the effects of his frequent drinks, fast asleep. Henry's mouth was just watering for some of that possum, but still he waited. All was quiet as the grave, save an occasional snore from the old man. After a time, when the odor of the roasted possum told the young darky that all things were ready, he softly opened the door, tiptoed to the fireplace, took down the possum, and at the table ate and ate and ate until fully satisfied; then, to add insult to injury, he took a little of the possum's fat and with his finger gently smeared it on the old man's lip, who was far gone with whiskey and sleep. Then the little blue-black imp of mischief went out of the house as quietly as he could and, taking a good sized chunk of wood, he swung it high into the air, giving it such a turn that it came down with a tremendous "k'fram" on the old man's roof. It was a fearful noise in the dead of the night. The old man, fearfully. startled from his sleep, sprang up from his chair, about half asleep and more than half drunk, and called out, "Hello! Hello! Rachel, old woman, whar's my possum?" and then, his tongue touching the possum fat on his lip and sucking it for its very savoriness, he began again, "It tas' like possum; it mus' be possum; it surely am possum. I'll tell yuh w'at's de truf 'bout dis, old woman, I mus' hav' eat dat possum in my sleep; but I tell yuh w'at's de fac', if I did, and I mus' hav' dun it, it lies li'ter on my stumac' and gives me less satisfacshun den any possum eve' I eat befo' in all my bo'n days." To which the old woman, Aunt Rachel, wisely replied. "Stop talkin' 'bout yo' possum, yuh ole fool yuh. Put out de li'te an' com' to bed; it's mos' day and yuh is drunk, dat's what yuh is."

CHAPTER IV.

        ON EITHER side of the stage road from Wilmington to New Berne, as it passed through the plantation, were well kept fences of the old-fashioned zigzag or Virginia style. In alternate corners of the fence were planted fruit trees, not of the short lived, modern, grafted or budded varieties, but trees grown from seed in case of the peach and cherry, and from the scion where the apple tree was desired. The result was that the trees planted in the early part of the century in some cases were bearing fruit in the early forties. Here and there, as good taste or convenience might suggest, the stately black walnut and hickory and an occasional mulberry tree had been allowed to stand. Here and there, when in full foliage, the dark leaved persimmon trees were dotted about the twelve or thirteen fields into which this large plantation was divided. The theory of the proprietor was that as the stock congregated under these persimmon trees to eat the fruit their shade did not lessen the productiveness of the fields where they stood. Certainly, with their deep, dark green foliage and symmetrical outlines, they gave much beauty to the landscape. Grandfather and father in their holding of these ancestral acres, evinced much wisdom in guarding their lovely trees and protecting the forests from vandal waste. It would have been far better for the landed estates of the South if the timber, especially the hardwood, had been more carefully guarded and economized.

        It was the custom of the proprietor to cultivated the fields on either side of the road on alternate years. At convenient distances from each other, large barns and cribs for the safe storage of the crops had been built, surrounded ordinarily by broad shelters and enclosed sheds for the comfortable stabling of the cows and sheep at night and for the feeding of the horses and mules at noon in the busy months of the year. Some of these barns were old and so constructed as to allow a four or six mule team to drive in with grain or forage and, after the load had been deposited, to pass out through the opposite double door. Connected with these barn yards there we closely fenced stock yards for the better management of the cows, sheep, hogs and colts of the plantation. These were well furnished with pumps or wells, affording an ample supply of water for the stock, which, however, the servants were not allowed to drink, as they were strongly impregnated with limestone of such quality as to render the water unhealthy for man, but which the animals could drink with impunity. The water which the servants drank was brought out in large casks mounted on wheels and was served to them in gourds or calabashes from wooden cans made by the plantation coopers from cedar, cypress or juniper wood, with which the estate abounded. By subterranean sinks or natural wells in this limestone formation the fields were admirably drained and the ditches were comparatively inexpensive. As you approached the river, where the land was undulating, there were numerous marl beds which had been worked for many years, and which in their rich deposits yielded the much desired lime for agricultural purposes. Some of them afforded in abundance a marine deposit as high as seventy-three per cent in carbonate of lime, with traces of magnesia and phosphoric acid. If you examine this specimen carefully you will find parts of the skeletons of sea animals, fish, crabs, turtles, etc. These bones account for the rich phosphates contained in the marl.

        "What crop of dark, rich green is that which you see along the western slope of those hills, and far out into the bottom of that two hundred acre field?"

        "That is the far-famed black-eyed pea of the South, the substitute for clover, which the long, hot summers of the South preclude from the crops of this plantation."

        "What noise is that we hear over in that direction?"

        "That's the song of the boys on their light carts hauling the marl to be scattered broadcast over the crop of peas, which you see is just going into bloom, the height of its exuberance, when it will be turned under good and deep, with a sweep chain connected with the plow to force the peas down, so as to be reached by the plowshare. This is the preparation for the wheat crop. Yes, the proprietor, while not numbering wheat among the staples of his plantation, always produces enough for home consumption and his seed for the next year."

        "What other crop is that growing down there just along the river bank?"

        "That's our rice crop. You observe the acreage is not large and yet there is plenty and to spare for all the plantation requirements."

        "What small birds are those rising up from the rice fields in such large numbers as to almost darken the view?"

        "They are the famous rice birds of the South just now holding their high carnival, attacking the rice crop just as the grain is going into its milky state."

        "What means that discharge of firearms, with reports so loud and long sustained as to suggest a body of infantry?"

        "That's old Uncle Amos and his band of helpers shooting these birds to protect the crop from these dainty little enemies. Have you ever eaten a rice bird?"

        "Not that I know of. I have eaten the sora or the reed bird, killed in the Valley of the Patuxent in Maryland, and it is certainly very delicious. So far as I know, it may be the famous ortolan."

        This conversation took place between the older son of the planter and his college mate from Princeton, a charming young gentleman from Maryland, who had come home with the young Carolinian to enjoy a week or two

of hunting and fishing and other forms of fine fun and frolic on the old plantation.

        "Wait until breakfast to-morrow," said my brother John, "and when you have eaten our rice bird, fat as butter, bones and all, you will never brag again of your sora, of your ortolan, of your famous reed bird, for I tell you, Tom Bowie, that this bird of the Carolinas, fatted on rice in the milky state, is the most delicate, toothsome food I ever tasted."

        "Let us now turn our faces homeward, for we have fully two miles to ride and the afternoon is far spent."

        As these two young gentlemen, mounted on horseback, turned the heads of their horses away from the river they came up with an old negro, "Uncle Daniel," riding in a cart drawn by a mule, well laden with corn in the ear. The old man is on his way to one of the feeding stations to give some twenty-five or thirty bullocks their evening meal. These are being fatted for the early winter markets, and had you time, reader, to inspect them closely you would find fine specimens of the Durham breed of cattle, of the large size and of admirable fattening properties, of which the proprietor was very proud.

        "What is that more than half grown servant doing over there to the left of us?"

        "We will ask him. Fred, what are you doing?"

        "I'm penning the sheep, sah."

        Yes, every night the flocks of sheep, of which there were several, numbering in all some three or four hundred, were carefully penned, for the double purpose of making manure in their well-littered folds, protecting the grown animals from the ravages of the dogs, and from the fox's known fondness for the lambs of the flocks. As one comes from the plantation proper and crosses the creek, on ascending the hill on the south side one enters one of the most beautiful avenues of cedars in this section of the State. It stretches away to the gate leading into the large grounds surrounding the mansion and embracing its curtilage, in length some half-mile and breadth some forty feet, as level almost as a dining room table.

        Who are those four men - servants - we meet at the

brow of the hill? Two of them are between fifty and sixty years of age, one is a shade older and the fourth is about thirty-five years old. The old man mounted on a blood bay mare, with black mane, tale and legs is Uncle Philip, the next in authority to the proprietor on the whole plantation. The youngest of the four is Cicero, the coachman. Observe him, if you please, as with all the air of a trained jockey he jauntily sits in the saddle. Did you ever see a more beautiful animal than that? You will not wonder when told that his dam was a Sir Archy mare, Vashti, the celebrated Tar River filly, and well known on the American turf. She "let down," or strained a tendon running against the famous old horse "Boston" on Long Island course. His sire was Trustee, the father of Fashion. The other two servants are Uncle Suwarro, named for a famous Russian general, and the trusted foreman of the plowmen of the plantation, while the small blue-black negro is Uncle Jim, the foreman of the hoe force of the plantation. Why are they so much excited? The large bell on the estate has struck the hour of noon, and as it is Saturday everybody is called off from work till Monday. This has been the custom of the plantation for a long, long time. No work after twelve o'clock on Saturday, unless it be during the harvest season.

        You observe those marl carters have all come in and there is an air of excitement on the faces of all the servants you see. What is up? There's a horse race on foot. Uncle Philip and Cicero are to try the speed of their respective horses and these two old foremen have come up the avenue to give them a fair start, while Robert, the blacksmith, holds the purse of ten dollars, which is the wager on this occasion. Harry and Ben are the judges. Presently you hear, in trumpet tones the word "Go," and off they speed along the whole length of the avenue, through the open gateway of the enclosure as rapidly as the horses can put their feet to the ground, both running under whip and spur. Cheer after cheer rends the air as Cicero's friends claim the victory, for the judges rule against old Uncle Philip, who yields as

gracefully as he can, but who "cusses" a little and then gives in, puts up his horse, opens his little store and proceeds to gather in the six-pences and shillings, with which to make the purse for another race with that "skillet headed nigger," Cicero, as in anger and contempt, the aristocratic old man calls his adversary of the plantation turf.

CHAPTER V.

        WE HAVE had a glimpse of the sports and pastimes of the servants in the ante-bellum days on this old estate. We have seen that there were joyous breaks in the days of labor, which made their plantation, not only an abode of much comfort but a scene of marked beauty in its well cultivated fields and other features of telling thrift. Before we go very far into the details of the lives of these dusky sons and daughters of toil, we shall devote an entire chapter to the amusements, in which the old planter encouraged them to indulge. We shall see with our own eyes that if the prosperity of the South was the natural result of systematized labor, one feature of the system was the recognition of the fact that the highest forms of usefulness and efficiency in life are only reached in the judicious unbending of the bow of labor. The question is often asked, "Is it not well nigh as important that people in all the relations of life should be properly amused, as that they should be fed?" The institution of the various public games among the ancients answered this question to the satisfaction of the pagan mind, while the elaborate and painstaking opening up of the beautiful parks in our modern cities, with widespreading groves and lovely views of miniature lakes with laughing cascades, all at great cost to the public, voices the wisdom of the nineteenth century civilization on this subject. Surely the old planter was wise in amusing as well as feeding and sheltering his servants.

        Before going any deeper into this narrative, while yet

we are on horseback, let us ride up this broad avenue of lovely elms and see what lies beyond. You observe it leaves the great public road just before you reach the large gate through which Uncle Philip and Cicero disappeared a moment ago at the close of the horse race. This avenue, some four hundred yards in length, is about forty feet in width and, leading due east, it gradually approaches the old mansion on the crest of an eminence. This gives the dwelling and its curtilage almost perfect drainage, so important in a flat or level country. As we ride along this avenue, on the left and right are two of the orchards of this estate, while still further on the right is a large number of buildings of various sizes and adapted to various uses. This large assemblage of houses is known as the "quarter," or the village, in which the homes of these many servants stand. But you see we are at the end of the avenue and just in front of us is the gate of the front yard of the writer's old home. Before entering it let us give up our horses to Cain and George who will take them to the stables for us. We can walk in now. Before doing so let us stop a moment or so and admire those fine trees, native to the soil, equidistant and at the same angle from the corners of the front piazza. Do you see those two noble old beech trees with trunks almost as large as a flour barrel and as symmetrical as if the then popular landscape gardener, Downing, had grown them to suit his beautiful taste? What monarchs they are and how comfortable the seats at their base, constructed of undressed hickory shoots. What splendid tree is the just at the front gate of the side yard sloping away to the little stream at the foot of the hill just north of where we stand? That is a pecan tree.

        Let us stand there a moment or two and take in the outline of the planter's dwelling. You see it is a very large house. Yes, inclusive of the piazzas it is just sixty feet square, three stories high, built of the best North Carolina pine and weatherboarded with fine yellow poplar. It stands on brick pillars about five feet above ground with no suggestion of cellarage, so as to avoid every semblance

of dampness. Why did not the old planter, with his abundant means, build it of brick? He is far too wise for that. In a damp climate brick is not the material for the construction of healthy homes. The planter's ancestry found that out to their deep sorrow long years ago, when in the settlement of New Berne, at the junction of the Neuse and Trent rivers, brick were employed for building purposes and many of the old Huguenot families suffered terribly, burying their dead from diseases incident to life in brick houses, in a damp, warm, malarial climate. So you see the house is of wood, but of such wood as the modern house builder never finds in these days. It is the very best of the original forests, carefully selected and seasoned in such manner as to preclude wind shakes, seams or cracks. The truth is these old planters except in a fox hunt or deer chase, were not of the order of men to hurry about anything, and least of all in the selection of material in the construction of their fine old homes.

        We must hurry up and describe this old mansion, for there are many things of interest to be told about it, and supper will be ready before you know it. Come, let us enter the old home. This piazza extending all around the house, first and second stories, is about twelve feet in breadth; and you observe the windows, of large size, open down to the floor. Well, the front door is wide open.

        "Why do you lift your hat as you enter?"

        "I do so in reverence of what I know is within."

        "Yes, full right you are."

        This old roof tree shelters the spot sacred to the very finest forms of old-fashioned Southern hospitality, the decadence of which we have witnessed to a saddening degree since 1865. but which still lingers here and there in the South; not, however, of the order which challenged the admiration of all who felt the touch of our lares and penates in the good old plantation days. The hallway running the whole depth of the house, is very broad, and the two sets of stairways are correspondingly broad and of easy pitch or grade, to compensate in some degree for

the modern elevator. You observe as you pass along the hall you are met by another hall just as broad, cutting the one by which we enter at right angles. Another feature of these broad halls is that quite as much money is judiciously expended in furnishing them as in any other part of the old home, while hammock-hooks suggest an indefinable comfort of a hot day, and book shelves tell you that the old planter's life consisted not in "bread alone," but that books entered largely into the life on one of these noble old estates. Here and there, beside the hat or cloak stands of fine old mahogany, you observe the polished horns of the patriarchs of flock and herd fastened securely under the old pictures gracing the walls. As you just now entered the large folding front door to your right hand, through that heavy door of oak finish, you enter the large parlor, with its piano, violin and guitar cases, and such bestowment of fine taste and ample means, in rich old furniture, with oil paintings and costly carpets and rugs as you would expect to find in the planter's home. The south-east corner room was the bedchamber of my father and mother, while across the hall was the nursery, and opposite the parlor was the family living or sitting room. In the two stories above were the rooms peculiarly devoted to the comfort of the daughters of the planter and the guests of the family. The attic rooms were devoted to the storage of bedclothing, cedar chests for woolens, trunks and such other features of a well appointed family. As you pass out of the large hall, running north and south across the broad piazza, you enter into another piazza in front of the large dining room opening back to one of the largest kitchens you would be likely to meet, with every convenience of closets for china and storerooms numerous and spacious.

        Stop a moment. Look at that capacious kitchen fireplace, broad enough to take in logs of wood six feet long and with old-fashioned crane for swinging the large pots on and off, as the old cook might like, with its smooth hearth running the whole width of the chimney and back three or four feet into the room. Why is this hearth so broad? For two reasons. First, it guards against

the danger of fire; secondly, on its broad area, in small ovens and tin kitchens, are carried to perfection some of the finest forms of good cooking of savory dishes for which this era of plantation life is so justly celebrated. What hooks are those driven into the bricks just below the broad shelf or mantelpiece? They are employed when a wild turkey or a roast of venison are there cooked, basted meantime with vinegar and lard or butter, being constantly turned around so as to present no one side too long to the roaring fire as to burn the meat, while the metal dish underneath catches all the juices as they are distilled by the great heat from the roaring fire. What large block of wood is that standing between the windows on one side of the kitchen, about three feet in diameter and four feet high? That is where the old cook beats her famous biscuit, which are the most delightful of all breads. Defying and despising both baking powder and soda, the old-fashioned Southern beaten biscuit is the very nonpareil of breakfast or supper bread, equally good hot or cold, in its flaky lightness. The French cooks of neither New York nor Paris have ever been able to equal it. In very truth it surpasses the famous Vienna rolls of the Washington City club houses. In their highest perfection they have sadly disappeared, with the old turbaned cooks of the old plantation régime, who mastered all their secrets. Later on we shall sample old Aunt Patty's beaten biscuit but we must hurry out of the kitchen, for we have much to see before we go down to the quarter.

        Standing on the kitchen piazza and looking east to your left and in front, there is an area in form of a quadrangle about one hundred feet on each side. In the center of this area is a well of water, supplied with a pump, well sheltered and with vines of honeysuckle trained to the sides. What houses are those with broad shelters facing south and west on this area? These are the smoke houses, three in number, in which the hams of five hundred hogs are cured annually. Those other houses are what are called the flour house, the coffee house and the large storehouses for groceries, etc. In the rear of the

smoke houses are smaller houses for the storage of potatoes and oysters in the shell. These delicious bivalves are kept in a dark room and are so well fed with meal stirred into salt water as to be scarcely able to stay in their shells. Unfortunately, however, they will lose their flavor after a few days, showing clearly that we cannot compete with nature. Just in the rear of these houses, on the brow of the hill, so as to be kept perfectly dry, are the various and spacious houses for poultry of all kinds, as well as the stately peacock, the strutting old turkey gobbler, the guinea fowl, the several varieties of ducks (the muscovy, the puddle and the English) and the ordinary barnyard fowl or chicken. They are all here in the yard of two acres or more, well fenced in, secure from the egg-sucking cur of the negro quarter, as well as from mink or weasel at night.

        Coming out of the poultry yard, let us go through the east gate of the area on which stands the large pump above described. To your left, through the gateway, let us enter and see if you ever saw a more beautifully appointed vegetable garden? In extent about an acre, it embraces in its various products all that you may wish to find, from the delicate tropical egg plant to the more commonplace cabbage. Here they all are. You need not wonder at the delicious vegetables found in such great abundance on the planter's table. Coming out of the garden what buildings are those off to the left? The first you see are the weaving rooms, in which are manufactured all the fabrics with which the servants of the plantation are clothed, including the woolen goods for winter and those of cotton for the summer. Those other houses you see down yonder six in number, are where the house servants are quartered.

        There live dear old Aunt Pheribe and her husband, Uncle Daniel. In the next house live Cicero, the coach man, and his wife Eliza. In the next dwell Handle, the dining room servant, and the laundress, Jane, with her family of girls, who are maids to the young ladies. Off to the south of the mansion, and separated from it by a large flower garden, is an enclosure of two acres or

more devoted to almost every variety of small fruit. Here were grown some of the very finest melons that ever graced a Southern breakfast table and the corn for the table that made such fine fritters.

        A description of this old home would not be complete were you not told of the use to which that large enclosure west of the chicken yard is put. Why is the fence so high? Why are those pieces of timber driven so far down in the ground, the ends of which you see projecting? Come, go with me to the gate for a moment and we will see. Here they come - Staver, Nimrod, Fashion, Venus, Starlight, Little Jolly and all the twenty or more of splendid fox hounds - eager and anxious to dash by you and hurry away to the woods for the chase. Is not that a splendid Irish setter there? Did you ever see a more beautiful animal in your life than that coal black pointer, black as night except one white toe? Beautiful names they have - Inez for the pointer, Don for the setter. The tall fence and the spiling driven into the ground now explain themselves. This is the dog kennel, with all its appointments for comfort and health for one of the best packs of hounds found in North Carolina. Why does the old planter keep those fine bucks in the kennel with the dogs? It is to familiarize the dogs with sheep and thus prevent many a worry on the hunt. As we expect to follow these dogs in a fox chase we will now leave them and inquire for what purpose those comfortable looking cottages up there on the hill are put? They were built by the old planter when his sons became large enough to go out to parties at night, so that they would not disturb their mother when they came home late, often accompanied by their young friends. We might spend an hour or so very pleasantly in the old flower garden, looking at the rich products of the fine tastes of the mistress in this department; but who is this coming up the walk with rather stately step and, as he approaches, greets the two young gentleman as they come out of their offices? This is an A.M. of the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, and who afterwards stood conspicuous among the Presbyterian divines of the State, as well for his broad learning as his

deep spirituality. Would you know his name? This is the Rev. James Melsey Sprunt, as fine a type of a man, intellectually and morally, as ever blessed two young Southerners in the capacity of tutor. Before this volume is finished we hope to see him again, as he sits around the hearthstone of the old home of a winter's night and with kindling eye and the sweetest of voices reads aloud Shakespeare, the Waverley novels, Dickens, Bulwer, and others authors of world wide fame.

CHAPTER VI.

        THUS you have had a bird's-eye view of the planter's home, so far as that portion in which he lived is concerned. Let us go down to the quarter and both inspect and describe the buildings in which the servants lived, and then we shall the more intelligently observe what fine specimens of health are presented by both the men and women of this estate. But you appear to be fatigued and maybe we had better defer this until Monday, for tomorrow will be Sunday, and the old planter insists upon everybody going to church? We will go in presently and enjoy the evening breeze on the south piazza as it comes from the sea, for, though in an air line we are some twenty miles from the ocean, regularly at this season of the year we get the cool, moist breeze, with its salty taste, as God sends it to us, by His great laws which govern the winds and the tides. The horses are ordered for 10:30 to-morrow morning (you said you preferred the saddle to the carriage, did you not?) and now for a little chat on the piazza and our supper, and then some music or, if you prefer it, we will ride over and see if those girls came up from Wilmington to the neighboring plantation.

        Just then a gentleman some fifty-five years of age made his appearance. You cannot mistake him. The age and the conditions which produced him have passed away, and yet he lives in the memory of all who have ever seen him. This particular representative of that noble type of Southern life, the old-fashioned country gentleman, was somewhat

above the average height and size, about five feet eleven inches tall and weighing some hundred and sixty-five. He was not strikingly handsome, but with the class of face suggested by that of the old German Field Marshal Von Moltke. With an ease of manner betokening gentle breeding, his marked characteristic was that peculiar type of manliness which came to a long line of progenitors living much in the open air. It was singularly attractive. His voice was that peculiar to the genuine sons of the South, soft, yet strong and singularly flexible, with marked emphasis given to the softer vowel sounds. His hair, originally jet black, was now tinged with gray, and from the large, soft blue eyes there was an expression of such tenderness as you always associate with a devoted husband and kind father. There was a compression of the lip, indicative of much will power, while the other features betokened the presence of so much that was notable and lovable, it would ever warrant one in thinking of this old planter as of such fine stamp, that while

                        "His enemy could do no right, his friend could do no wrong."

        Near by him sat his other half, the blessed woman whom he had led from the neighboring county to grace his home and bless his life with that more than talismanic power which God has given to women in the bestowment of that far-reaching unselfishness which is constantly suggesting the Virgin's Son, and which is at once the source and secret of her strength and influence. Married in the early part of the century, so close and happy had been their married life that the blessed work of mutual assimilation had gone on to such a degree, that in many respects they were strikingly alike. To this marriage came the gift of nine children, four of whom had died in infancy or early childhood, leaving now two sons, the present writer and an older brother, and three daughters. The oldest daughter had married a Wilmington gentleman, gave birth to a lovely little girl and then fell asleep, when we placed her in the "God's Acre" of her fathers. Soon thereafter the second sister married Dr. W. W. D. of Wilmington, and leaving two sons, went into the Great

Beyond to join her loved ones in the Paradise of God. But this is not a volume of genealogy. The above family events have been given in order that in proper connection may be stated a peculiarity of the old planter. One of the conditions of the marriage of these daughters was that the husband was not to take the wife away from the old home. The dear old father said, with telling pathos that the family was too small, the acreage on the estate was far too great, and that the old mansion was far too large to allow of any colonizing. So we all dwelt there together, with cares, duties and responsibilities so divided out as to suggest the presence of no drone in the large hive.

        But it is the supper bell we hear and after this meal you remember, it was suggested that we should ride over to the neighboring plantation and see the girls of the old planter. We shall not describe this charming meal, because in another chapter we are to tell at length of the cookery, both in the great house and in the cabin. All went the next day and heard a most excellent sermon, in the commodious church, so arranged as to allow the presence of a large number of the servants. You would have been delighted to have seen how smart and tidy these servants were, as they appeared in their part of the church building, dressed up in their Sunday go-to-meeting clothes, reverently kneeling to worship that God, unknown to the poor pagans in Africa from which their fathers came. Sunday afternoon was passed in various ways Some of the servants interchanged visits on the home plantation, or, furnished with written permits, went to see their friends on the neighboring estates. Some went out to the lake to bathe, riding the horses they worked during the week, in order to give both themselves and the horses a good bath in this beautiful sheet of limpid water Ten o'clock at night found all of this large family comfortably established at home, ready for the refreshment of a night's healthy sleep, except those men servants who had married on the adjoining plantations, where they had gone on Saturday afternoon. These came in time for the assembly call, rung about sunrise on Monday morning.

        We will get the most satisfactory view of the quarter by beginning at the east end of the principal street and, as we go along, carefully observing right and left. This street the negroes called Broadway, and broad it was sure enough, as in width about seventy feet it ran almost due east and west for a long distance. The houses, separated about fifty feet from each other, were built up some distance from the driveway, with footpaths running along in front of them. Some of these were of cypress logs closely joined together and made perfectly tight with mortar, with hog or cow hair worked in it to make it stick in the crevices. They varied in size, as did the frame houses which were scattered here and there; the larger ones were given to the larger families for greater comfort and healthfulness. In size the average house was about thirty feet in length by twenty-two in breadth, and was divided into two rooms downstairs - one the cooking and living room, the other the family sleeping room - while the upstairs was similarly divided. Nearly all of these were furnished with good brick chimneys and ample fireplaces. In warm weather the cooking was done out of doors under an improvised bush shelter. Frequently both the front and the back of the houses were protected by shelters wider far, and, for their purposes, a great deal more comfortable than the modern veranda. In the rear of the house was the family back yard, with its henhouse and its plot of ground for a garden, with which each home was supplied. The provident families were never without vegetables, and notably so did the long stalked member of the cabbage family known as the "collard" abound, which, when well frosted, was both esculent and savory to their appetites, well whetted by a life in the open air and its perfect freedom from care and responsibility - those twin murderers of happiness in human life.

        Come, go in one of the cabins, as many will insist on calling the homes of the servants on the old plantation. You will see they differ among themselves. Some are as neat and tidy as the wife and mother who meets you at the door and with graceful courtesy and kindly greeting

invites you in; respectfully, yet warmly, inquiring about the white folks at the "great house - Ole Marster and Mistiss and Marse John and Marse Jeems and Miss Car'line." If you go in the sleeping room you will find that the prevailing bed is made of the long gray Spanish moss, with which the swamps to the east of the plantation abound. This moss they boil and pick with their fingers, stuffing their bedticks with it, so as to make a soft and springy bed. They draw their quota of blankets every winter from the plantation stores and, what with their quilts and comforters, which they make themselves, and the abundance of excellent firewood, there is no suffering from cold, such as comes to mind when you think of the white tenement sufferers in New York and other large cities. It is not stated that there are equal comfort and cleanliness in all these forty homes and more. Some of these servants are constitutionally neat and thrifty; others again will discover, in many ways, the fact that their mothers and fathers taught them by example to neglect order, system and the laws of cleanliness.

        In the matter of health and consequent usefulness the planter, through his foreman, insisted upon a rigid police of each house every week, with such penalties as in his judgment conduced to a high standard of cleanliness and health, as well in the house as about the clothing. In the center of these buildings and just in the middle of the broad street, at the point of junction with a cross street, was the town well, with abundant supply of potable water. The streets were well shaded by long rows of fine elms and maples, while in the back yard is grown in many cases, the mulberry tree, whose abundant supply of fruit is so useful to Aunt Polly in feeding her chickens and ducks; nor is it despised by her children.

        There are two or three features about the quarter of which mention must be made. In the garden of each one of these homes is a pig pen, in which two fine hogs are raised each year by the most thrifty of the servants. Where do they get the grain with which to raise and fatten these pigs? The head of nearly every family has his patch of

ground, in which he grows corn, peas and cotton, or any crop he prefers. When does he work his crop? On Saturday afternoon or by moonlight, if he likes to do so instead of going coon hunting. So you see, that Sambo, drawing his rations, has meat to sell, and "Ole Marster" always allows him to take his "crap" to town in the large wagons, which invariably go to New Berne just before Christmas to do the plantation trading. Besides this, the old planter always stands ready to purchase anything marketable - eggs, chickens, ducks and wild fruit (whortleberries and currants) with which the woods abound in their season. You must not think for one moment that all the servants on the old plantation have all these things to sell. They do not. Only the thrifty ones; and the rule was, almost without exception, that those who were most faithful in the performance of plantation duties were industrious and frugal in their own little matters.

        Let us speak of the laws of sanitation, which were rigidly enforced. Twice each year these homes, inside and outside, were carefully whitewashed. Once each week the yards were carefully inspected and all rubbish and garbage, under penalty, were placed on that compost heap you see there near the garden fence, heavily covered with marl, rich in lime, to decompose or sweeten any putrescent matter and thus keep the premises seemly and healthy. Again, do you see those oblong iron depositories, mounted on posts, enclosed in boxes, filled with earth along the sides and underneath? What are they and to what purpose are they given? Those large, iron troughs, six feet and more in length, four feet wide and some ten inches in height, are the old salt vats employed in the making of salt, by evaporation of sea water in the the war of 1812, when the British embargo closed our ports to the West India salt. The old planter has purchased a number of them and mounted them as you see They are filled with the resinous residuum from his turpentine distilleries, commonly known as dross, every afternoon during the sickly or malarial season: and when set to blazing, as they are every evening about twilight, three

purposes are served. First, they flood the village or quarter with strong light; secondly, they infuse the fumes of cooking turpentine in the air and thus purify it; thirdly, they destroy myriads upon myriads of mosquitoes and thus sweeten the sleep of these dusky toilers. You observe they are placed all along the streets and four of them are seen, two in front and two in the rear of the mansion. It was indeed a beautiful sight, that of these burning masses all ablaze at once, lighting up the truth of the old planter's love for his children and his servants in thus protecting their health.

        You observe that especially comfortable looking house, just across the street from where we are standing, and the other next to it? Those are the homes of two of the foremen on the plantation; Uncle Jim with his wife, Aunt Patty, live in one, and Uncle Suwarro and Aunt Rachel occupy the other, with their respective families. What is that suspended high up in the air, just there between those two houses? That is the old plantation bell which, in the hands of Uncle Jim, regulates the movements of the servants, calling them to and from labor and telling out the hours for the various duties. Whose cabin or home is that just behind that large tree - "Pride of China," I think you call the variety? That is Granddaddy Cain's home and where his wife, my dear old "Mammy Phillis," lives. The old man you see there in the shade of the tree, hackling corn shucks for mattresses, is the patriarch of the whole plantation. He is quite old, but as he gets up and walks towards the door of his house and takes a drink of water out of a gourd, do you observe what a splendid specimen of a man he is - how tall? How magnificently developed in his heyday he must have been! When younger he was the plantation miller for many years, and for honesty and fidelity there was no servant on all the river estates whose reputation was more enviable. His word was as good as his bond, and no man of all the thousands who during the long years of his service brought grain to my grandfather's mill ever suspected him of dishonesty on either side. In his old age he is now one of the several stock feeders on the estate,

and you can see him presently as he goes down to the barnyard to get out his mule and cart and starts out to salt the cattle and feed the mares and colts. He is a devoted member of the Methodist Church, as many of the servants are. He holds his family prayers night and morning, rejoicing with many others in the hope of eternal life through the Blessed Nazarene. When the present writer was a boy he heard a good joke on the old man, illustrating his racial fondness for possum. This is the plantation version as given by my factotum, Cain, his grandson.

        "You sees, suh, dat granddaddy was a-holdin' his family prayers one nite, arter he done swung up a mity big fat possum fo' de fiah. It was Sa'ddy nite, suh, an' de possum was a-roastin' for the Sunday dinner. De ole man he prayed and he prayed, suh, spang 'til I tho't he neber was gwine to quit; and he prayed on and he prayed on. All of a sudden he stopped rite short and he snuff'd de air and called out, 'Philis, ole woman, sure's yuh is bawn dat possum is a-burnin' up. Why doan' yuh turn dat possum, ole woman, and dat mi'ty quick.' An' he went on a-prayin' and arter a while, suh, he busted out 'amen!' Surely, Marse Jeems, I wuz mi'ty glad to hear him say amen, for I was mi'ty tired, suh, but I was afeard to go to sleep, fur if I had I know'd granddaddy would have wore me out to a frazzle. He was dat 'ticular, suh, of his prayer. Suah as you is born, Marse Jeems, he duz lov' possum all de same."

        We shall hope to see Granddaddy Cain again before this volume closes - this Fidus Achates of the old plantation.

CHAPTER VII.

        LET us take this cross street, running out of Broadway into what the servants call Chestnut street. What strikingly large building is that which fronts us as we go on in our rambling walk of observation? That is what is called, in the parlance of the plantation, the gin house or the cotton gin. You observe it is very large and three stories in height. To what use is it to be put? You see it is surrounded on all sides by a deep shedding; in this first shed room are kept the large family carriage, sulky, buggies and light wagons, some from the celebrated factory of Cook in New Haven, Connecticut, and several others from Dunlap in Philadelphia. The old planter prided himself on the cost and elegance of his vehicles, and that beautiful family carriage, finished in silk, did not cost him less than a thousand dollars, with fine, silver-plated harness to correspond. With the large, steel-gray horses purchased in Baltimore it makes up an outfit so exactly suited to her taste that the mistress would not take twenty-five hundred dollars for it. There is a well-appointed harness room, some of the very best of Concord, New Hampshire, work. Ah, these old planters and their families had the very best the markets of the world could afford. The large shed room on the east is known as the pork house, where the meat rations of the estate are kept, at the great doorway of which they are served or dealt out by weight on alternate Saturday afternoons. On the north side of the main building, in a commodious well lighted shed room. is where the carpenters, four in

number, ply their most useful industries. On the west side you have two rooms, one in which Virgil, the painter, keeps his paints and oils; the other is where the various stores of hardware, nails, bolts, screws, etc., are kept. What octagon-shaped house is that out in the yard? That is the cotton screw or compress, where the cotton and wool are baled for market. That stairway out there to your left leads up to where the cotton is kept before it is ginned, and that small room there is where old Santy mends the harness, and half soles the shoes of the servants. You observe in it the only stove on the estate? Why is this? This stove is used to keep the old cobbler's wax ends so warmed as to be pliable in the coldest of weather. You see, in the various and multiform appointments of his large estate, the old planter does not forget anything. Well, we must go on. What buildings are those down there in that little ravine, with the large gum trees growing near by and those beautiful willows fed by the moisture of the small streams, which constitutes the drainage of the quarter? These are the quarters of perhaps the most useful and at the same time the most interesting servant on the estate; that is Robert, the blacksmith, and that Hercules of a man near by is Washington, who wields the ponderous sledge hammer as though it were a toy. Look at the splendid muscle in those brawny arms, as he and his chief are keeping time with their hammers on the blazing iron on the anvil. Indeed it is an anvil chorus, and how the sparks do fly all over the smithy, but they are well protected by their ample leather aprons. What is Robert doing now? He is putting a set of steel plates on that beautiful saddle horse out there in the yard. Does he work in steel too? Yes, he served his apprenticeship when a youth under one of the best artisans in the city of Richmond, Virginia. So you see there is skilled labor on this estate as well as in Lowell, Massachusetts. That large room on the left is where Cæsar, the wheelwright, makes and repairs the carts and wagons. As we ascend the hill from this ravine, on that broad level are many houses. To what uses are they put? Some of them are barns and cribs for the storage

of grain and forage; others again are large wagon sheds and others still for the comfortable stabling of one hundred and fifty horses and mules that are required on this estate. Those out there are for the comfort of the milch cows and the five yoke of oxen. Over there in a more modern building are kept the fancy or pleasure horses of the family, while lower down, in a separate lot or inclosure with high fence all around, are the stables for the two fine stallions, "John Richlands" and Crackaway," the latter a valuable present from one of the old planter's dearest friends, William B. Meares, Esquire, of Wilmington; the former the colt of Vashti, the celebrated Sir Archy mare sired by imported Trustee, the father of the world-renowned Fashion, the empress of the American turf. Do you hear that fearful noise down there - a sort of combine of foghorn and trombone? My sakes! what an unearthly racket that is! It