IT was the day after Christmas in the year 1846.

Near sundown, two young officers of the army of the United States sat upon one of the benches on the promenade of the great reservoir which supplies the city of Rio de Janeiro with water.

Both were lieutenants, - one of engineers, the other of artillery. Any one half acquainted with the United States would have recognized them as West Pointers; and their presence in this far-away spot was easily accounted for by a glance downward from the coign of vantage where they sat, at a fleet of United States men-of-war and troop ships riding at anchor in the bay.

Nowhere in all the world is there a scene more beautiful than that spread out before them. Below, falling away down the mountain side to the silver sands of the bay, were the palms and gardens, and orange and olive groves, surrounding the residence of the Cateti suburb. To seaward, the southern boundary of the mile-wide entrance to the bay, loomed the bald, brown peak of the Sugar Loaf Mountain, with the beautiful suburb of Botafogo nestling near its base. Huge mountains, their dense foliage lit by the sinking sun, ran down to the water's edge upon the opposite or northern shore. Far beneath them was the Gloria landing for naval vessels. To westward, sweeping out into the bay with bold and graceful curves, and spread beneath them like a map, was the peninsula upon which the city of Rio is built, and beyond this, gleaming in the evening sunlight, and studded with islands of intense verdure, extended the upper bay until it was lost in the distance, where, on the horizon, the blue peaks of the Organ range closed in the lovely picture.

The ships bearing the commands to which the young gentlemen were attached were bound to California around Cape Horn. The troops were to take part in the war then flagrant between the United States and Mexico. A short stop had been made at Rio for water and provisions and these two youngsters were among the first to apply for and obtain shore leave.

The dusty appearance of their dress, and other evidence of fatigue, showed that they had not failed to sustain the reputation of their countrymen as investigators of everything new and strange. In fact, they had, in the morning exhausted the sights to be seen in the city. After amusing themselves in the shops of the Rua Direita, and replenishing their stock of Spanish books in the Rua do Ovidor and wandering through several churches and residence streets, they had become very much interested in the remarkable aqueduct which supplies the city of Rio with water.

Our young soldiers, in their engineering zeal, had followed the aqueduct back to its source of supply; and now, bound for the Gloria landing, were resting, deeply impressed by the great work, and by the genius and skill of its builders. But both the youths, recalling the fact that it was the Christmas season, felt, in spite of all the tropical novelty and strange beauty surrounding them as evening closed in, a yearning for an American home and voice and face; and their conversation naturally enough fell into conjecturing how the Christmas was being spent by their own loved ones in the United States, or in bemoaning the good things they were missing.

While thus engaged, they saw two men approaching. One was in civilian dress; the other wore the uniform of assistant surgeon in the United States navy. The newcomers were engaged in animated conversation; and, although the civilian was a man of forty, while his companion was a youngster of twenty-five, there was little if any difference in the alertness of their steps.

The faces of the young officers lit up with pleasure as, upon the near approach of the two pedestrians, they caught the sound of genuine United States English. They had observed the American flag floating from a residence in the Cateti, and had no doubt that the persons who were now passing were in some way connected with the legation. Accordingly, with that freedom which fellow countrymen feel in addressing each other in foreign lands, the West Pointers arose at the approach of the two gentlemen, and, catching the eye of the elder of the two, advanced, announced their rank and service, and made some inquiry as a groundwork of further conversation. They were not mistaken in their surmises. The gentleman addressed was the Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to the Empire of Brazil from the Republic of the United States. A title like that was well calculated to paralyze the familiarity of two young military men; and when they realized that, unannounced and covered with dust, they had of their own motion ventured into conversation with the bearer of such an august title, their first impulse was to apologize for their temerity and to withdraw. Even from an officer of no higher grade than captain in their own service, they were accustomed to a greeting strictly formal, usually accompanied by the inquiry, “Well, sir? state your business;” and, having done so, they were generally glad enough to salute and withdraw. Here they were, without any business, standing in the presence of a high official, with nothing more to say, and with no excuse to give for what they had said. But before their embarrassment could grow more annoying, the minister put them completely at their ease. “Well met!” he exclaimed; “we are just returning homeward from the city. Come! The more the merrier: you shall dine with me. I still have some Christmas turkey and plum pudding, and we will drink the health of the good angel who sent my countrymen to me at this blessed season.”

During the course of their walk to the American legation, the young fellows had opportunity to observe their newly found host more carefully. To them he was a revelation. His name and position in politics were not unknown to them; for although still young, he had for many years been a conspicuous figure in national politics in the United States. The echoes of his eloquence, as well as accounts of his game-cook courage, had penetrated even into the isolated world of the Academy at West Point. In fact, he had been absent from the United States but two or three years upon this mission, which had been accepted partly on account of failing health, and partly from a desire to strike a blow at the infamous African slave-trade. He had accomplished much towards breaking up the slave-trade, and derived great benefit to his health.

Brilliant at all times in conversation, he was, on this occasion, unusually interesting. The sight of his country's ships in the harbor, and the news of the struggle with Mexico, so excited and elated him that he was seen at his best by his visitors. The two boys studied him as if he had been some great actor. Tall and thin, he was nevertheless exceedingly active and muscular. His dress consisted of simple black, with spotless linen. He wore the open standing collar and white scarf affected by the gentlemen of that period. The only ornament upon his person was a large opal pin confining the neckerchief. His head gear, suited to the climate, was one of those exquisitely wrought white Panama hats which is the envy of men living beyond the tropics. Beneath this was a head exquisitely moulded, with a noble brow, and large hazel eyes, the ever-changing expression of which, coupled with a full, rich voice, charmed and fascinated his guests. His silken blond hair was thrown back and worn long, as was the custom of the day. A nose too handsome to be called Roman, yet too strong to be designated as Grecian; a mouth wide and mobile, filled with even, white teeth; and a strong chin with a decided dimple, - completed the remarkable face which turned in ever-changing expression, from time to time, towards its companions, as they strode homeward in the twilight.

Such was the American minister; and, according to the mood in which one found him, he impressed the stranger as the gentlest, the tenderest, the most loving, the most eloquent, the most earnest, the most fearless, the most impassioned, or the fiercest man he had ever met. Nobody who saw him ever forgot him.

They reached the legation just as it was growing dark, and as the full-orbed moon was rising from the distant sea. Seeking the veranda, and seating his guests in the wicker easy-chairs with which it was well supplied, the minister excused himself, and left them for a few minutes to their own observations and reflections.

As the soft sea-breeze came up to them, laden with garden perfumes; as they watched the golden highway the moon's reflection on the sea; as they saw the twinkling lights of the ships in the deep shadows of the bay below them, - they felt as if they had indeed discovered an earthly paradise; and when a fair blond girl in filmy apparel glided through the drawing-room and joined them speaking pure English, it seemed as if their paradise was being peopled by angels. Everybody here spoke in English. Everything spoke of home. The pictures on the walls, the books on the tables, yes, the dishes at table were all American.

The visitors were conducted to their apartments to make necessary preparations for dinner. Soon after their return to the drawing-room, the minister reappeared with a look somewhat troubled, as he apologized for his long absence and the non-appearance of the lady of the house.

A moment later the folding-doors rolled back, and the English butler announced that dinner was served. Oh what a contrast with the ward-room of the man-of-war in which our two lieutenants had been dining for a month or more!

Dinner over, the company once more sought the cool veranda, where coffee and cigars were served. There they were joined by Baron Lomonizoff, the Russian minister who had called to be informed of all the recent developments in the controversy with Mexico, and who spoke English perfectly. Later, just as the baron was bidding adieu, in fact, at what seemed to our young friends to be a very late hour for visiting, the oddest imaginable specimen of Brazilian humanity was introduced as Dr. Ildefonso.

His efforts at English were startling. They nearly convulsed our two young friends, and reconciled them to their own failures at Portuguese.

As the little doctor showed no signs of leaving, and as, by one or two indications, the young visitors began to suspect it was time for them to go, they reluctantly took their departure, thanking their host a thousand times for the pleasure he had given them, and chatting joyously, on the route to the ship, about the good fortune which had given them such a Merry Christmas.

The little Brazilian doctor and the surgeon in the navy had remained because there was work on hand for them. I entered my name on the docket of humanity that night; and as the lawyers say, my cause was continued until the further order of the court.

How do I know it? I will tell you.

Forty-five years later, at a great banquet in New York, I was sitting beside an aged, grizzled general of the armies of the Union.

Said the old general cheerily, “Did I ever tell you of my visit to your father in Rio?” Receiving a negative response, he proceeded in his inimitable way to recount every incident above set forth, omitting the hour of his own departure from the legation. The memory of the struggles of the little Brazilian doctor with the English language still amused him immensely. He was recalling some absurd mistake of Dr. Ildefonso, when I looked up, and, with a merry twinkle in my eye, said, “General, at what hour did you leave the Cateti that night?” “Oh, I should say about eleven or twelve o'clock,” said the general. “Well, now, do you know, my dear general, I deeply regret you left so early. I arrived myself that night about two hours after your departure, and would have been so delighted to meet you under my father's roof.” This sally was met by a hearty laugh from the listening company, and was followed by a glass of wine to the memory of those olden days, since when so many things have happened.

OUR voyage terminated in the kingdom of Accawmacke, the abiding-place of my ancestors for two and half centuries. Although within eight hours of New York and six hours from Philadelphia by rail, the region and its people are as unlike those of these crowded centres of humanity as if they were a thousand miles away.

John Smith tells us, in his memorable narrative of earliest American explorations, that when Captain Nelson sailed in June, 1607, for England, in the good ship Phoenix, he, John, in his own barge, accompanied him to the Virginia capes; and there, after delivering his writings for the company, he parted with him near the southernmost cape, which he named Cape Henry. Sailing northward, Captain Smith first visited the seaward island, which he named Smith's Island, after himself. It is still called Smith's Island, and is owned by the Lee family. Then he returned to the northernmost cape, at the entrance to the Chesapeake Bay, and named it Cape Charles, in honor of the unfortunate prince afterwards known as Charles I. Upon the point of this cape Smith encountered an Indian chief, whom he describes as “the most comely, proper, civil salvage” he had yet met. The name of this chief was Kictopeke. He was called “The Laughing King of Accomack,” and Accomack means, in the Indian tongue, “The Land Beyond the Water.” He bore in his hand a long spear or harpoon, with a sharpened fish-bone or shell upon its point; and he it was who taught John Smith and his companions to spear the sheepshead and other fish in the shallow waters hard by. John Smith and The Laughing King have been buried for well-nigh three centuries, but the people about Cape Charles still spear sheepshead on the shoals in the same old way.

Smith and his companions cruised along the western shore of this Peninsula of Accawmacke, which is the eastern shore of the Chesapeake Bay, until they reached what is now called Pocomoke River, the present boundary between Virginia and Maryland. The distance is probably eighty miles. The reason assigned for the long cruise was that they were searching for fresh water. To those who know the abundant springs of the Peninsula, this statement is surprising. Overtaken in the neighborhood of Pocomoke by one of those summer thunderstorms which are so prevalent in that region, they were driven across the bay to the western shore, and thence they cruised down the Chesapeake until they turned into what is now called Hampton Roads. Passing the low sandspit where the ramparts of Fortress Monroe now frown and the gay summer resorts are built, they stopped at the Indian village Kickotan, located upon the present site of Hampton. Obtaining there a good supply of food from the Indians, they returned to the Jamestown settlement, about forty miles up the river, then called Powhatan, now known as the James. In this as in all things, the Englishman appropriated what belonged to the Indian, and King James supplanted King Powhatan.

It was on this return voyage that Smith, while practicing the art acquired from the King of Accawmacke, impaled a fish upon his sword, in the shallow waters about the mouth of the Rappahannock River. Unaware of the dangerous character of his captive, he received in his wrist a very painful wound from the spike-like fin upon the tail of the fish. This wound caused such soreness and such swelling that he thought he was like to die, and his whole party went ashore and laid Smith under a tree, where he made his will. “But,” says he, “by night time the swelling and soreness had so abated that I had the pleasure of eating that fish for supper.” The next morning the journey was resumed, and the place, in remembrance of the incident, was named Stingaree Point. To this day, that point at the mouth of the Rappahannock is called Stingaree Point; and that fish is still called Stingaree by the people along the Chesapeake Bay.

After this famous cruise, John Smith, who was as active and restless as a box of monkeys, made his map of Virginia, which is still extant, - and a pretty good map it is, showing his capes and his islands, and his points and his rivers, and what not, - in which map the Kingdom of Accawmacke bears a most conspicuous part.

On that historic document, old John at certain point printed little pictures of deer, to show where they most abounded; and at other points he designated where the wild turkeys were most plentiful. The author of this humble narrative has, in his day, hunted every variety of game which abounds at the present time in Old Virginia; and just where the deer and turkeys were most abundant in 1608, according to John Smith's map, there are the most abundant now. In the counties of Surry and Sussex, upon the south side of the James, run, doubtless, the descendants of those very deer whose pictures adorn the map of John Smith, published three centuries ago; and within the past twelve months the writer has followed the great-great-great- grandchildren of the identical turkeys, no doubt, from whose flocks were captured, in 1616, the twenty birds sent by King Powhatan to his brother the King of England.

But to return to our Kingdom of Accawmacke.

After the Jamestown colonists had tired of poor old John Smith, after he had blown himself up with his own powder while smoking in his boat, upon one of his return trips to Jamestown from the present site of Richmond; after he had returned to England, broken in health and spirits, - the colonists who remained found, among their other miseries and tribulations, that they were sadly in need of salt.

Bearing in mind stories brought back from the coast by Smith, Sir Thomas Dale, governor, in the year 1612 detailed a party from the Jamestown settlement to go to the Kingdom of Accawmacke and boil salt for the settlers at Jamestown.

We may well imagine that such a task was far from grateful to those to whom it was allotted. It was looked forward to by them, no doubt, as the equivalent of solitary confinement in a dangerous locality. At Jamestown the settlers were located upon an island. This fact and their numbers gave them comparative security from the savages. In Accawmacke the party assigned to saltboiling was placed upon the same land as the Indians; and its numbers were so small, and the position so isolated from the chief settlement by the Chesapeake Bay between them, that their situation would have been most perilous in case of attack. It was therefore, doubtless, in the spirit of satire that the party named the place at which they first located upon the eastern shore, Dale's Gift.

Thus came about the first settlement of the white man upon the eastern shore peninsula of Virginia; and, recognizing its separation from the other settlements, the kings of England for many years addressed all their decrees to the Virginia colonists to their “faithful subjects in ye Colonie of Virginia and ye Kingdom of Accawmacke”

Like many another venture undertaken reluctantly in ignorance, this settlement upon the eastern shore proved to be anything but an irksome and dangers transfer. The party at Dale's Gift found the Accawmacke Indians totally unlike the warlike and treacherous tribes across the bay; and from that time forth there never was, not even at the time of the general outbreak of the savages in 1629, any serious trouble between the whites and the Indians of the eastern shore. The climate also was much more salubrious than that of the swamp region where the brackish waters at Jamestown bred malaria. As for sustenance, they found the place an earthly paradise. In the light and sandy soil corn, vegetables, and many varieties of fruit grew with little care of cultivation and in great abundance. Fish and shell-fish of every kind abounded in the ocean, bay, and inlets. Wild fowls of many sorts, from the lordly wild goose to the tiny teal, swarmed in the marshes and along the coast. Game in great abundance, furred and feathered, could be had for the shooting of it upon the land; the fig and the pomegranate grew in the open air. And the influence the Gulf Stream, which in passing these capes approaches to within thirty miles of the coast and then turns abruptly eastward, made, as it still makes, residence upon the eastern shore of Virginia most charming and delightful. The eastern shore men were the epicures of the colony. A hundred years before New York knew the terrapin, it was the daily food in Accawmacke.

We may be sure that the less fortunate settlers at Jamestown, Smithfield, Henricopolis, Flower de Hundred and the Falls of the James were not long in finding out the delights of this, at first, despised settlement in Accawmacke. History tells us that when, twenty years later, the colony of Virginia was divided into eight colonies, “to be governed as are the shires in England,” the Accawmacke settlement was of sufficient importance to constitute of itself one of these eight counties; and in 1643, when the whole colony had a population of but fifteen thousand, one thousand of these were upon the eastern shore. When Captain Edmund Scarburgh, presiding justice, opened the first County Court of Accawmacke at Eastville, the county seat, in the autumn of 1634, The Laughing King of Accawmacke had no doubt ceased to laugh; for he, like many another savage chief before and after him, had by this time felt the fangs of the British bull-dog sink deep into the vitals of his kingdom, and became sensible of the fact that it was a grip which, once fastened upon its prey, never relaxed its hold.

Rare old records are those of Captain Edmund Scarburgh and his successors, and very curious reading do they furnish. You may see them, reader, if, instead of flashing and dashing over every other country in search of novelty, you will seek the things which are interesting in your native land, within a stone's throw of your door. There they are, preserved to this day, in the little brick court house, and are continuous from then until now, without a break, preserving the history of their section intact through a period of nearly three centuries.

The Peninsula is no longer a single county. About 1643, ambitious Colonel Obedience Robins, from Northamptonshire, England, succeeded in changing the name of the Peninsula to Northampton. It was not until 1662, when the eastern shore of Virginia was divided into two counties, that the upper portion resumed the old title of Accawmacke, which it retains to this day. The lower part of the original Accawmacke is still called Northampton.

OUR folks have been in Old England since the days of Alfred, and in America since Thomas West, Lord de la War, was governor of the Virginia colony in 1608, when numerous brothers, cousins, and relatives followed him hither in search of the treasures of the still undiscovered South Sea.

There and here, for centuries, in peace and in war, they have never failed to be mixed up in the thick of whatever game the English stock has played.

They have lived and died in Devonshire and Somersetshire for nearly ten centuries. Until its recent destruction to make way for the government buildings, the old; family nest at Plymouth was almost as well known to Englishmen as the banks of the Tamar itself. Burke tells us the name is among the oldest in England.

The first American ancestor of our name was a younger son of these old Devonshire people, and came to the Virginia colony in the reign of Charles the First. The ancient shippinglists show that he sailed from Gravesend, July 4, 1636, after first taking the oath of allegiance to king and church. He was a lad of eighteen, who, yielding to the spirit of adventure which then prevailed in England, joined his friends, the Scarburghs of Norfolk, in the Kingdom of Accawmacke.

Two hundred and sixty years of separation ordinarily works considerable estrangement, and difference in characteristics, between the separated branches of a family. Not so with our people. If they possess one predominant trait, it is their faith in and attachment to anybody and everybody bearing the name, or springing from the old stock. But for the evidence it gives of stanchness in love and loyalty, the way in which the old ties are kept up, to this day, between the English and American branches would seem absurd. Descendants in the eighth degree since the separation recognize the kinship; and the English cousins welcome the Americans to hearth and home, taking no note of the two and a half centuries which have elapsed since the American immigrant wandered off from his English home, and placed the Atlantic Ocean between himself and his family.

And let me tell you, you boys of America, that there is no higher inspiration to any man to be a good man, a good citizen, and a good son, brother, or father, than the knowledge that you come from honest blood. Few who have it scorn it, and many of those who are loudest in belittling it would give all they have to possess it. And, boys, let me tell you another thing. When you are hunting for that honest blood, when you are looking back into the wellsprings of your existence for the source of the virtue the courage, the manhood, the truth, the honesty, the reverence, the family love, the simplicity of life, which will make you what true men ought to be, believe me, you are more apt to find it in the progenitors who came from “the right little, tight little island” than anywhere else on this rolling planet.

Don't deceive yourselves with the notion that England did not furnish the best of us. We have had our troubles with her in the past, it is true. But it is hard for the mother to realize that her boy is grown, and accord him his rights as a man. She sometimes makes it very uncomfortable for him by failing to recognize that he is no longer in his swaddling-clothes. But there is not a true-hearted boy in the world who, in spite of his mother's shortcomings, does not feel in his heart that there is no other like her.

Don't take my word for it, if you think I am an old fogy. Wait until you grow up and see the world for yourselves. Travel through Russia, or Turkey, or Austria and you will never see a thing to stir your heart with a desire to be one of them. Stand in the shadow of the Pyramids, and you will be untouched by one wish that your blood were Egyptian. Go through Germany, and, while you will find there much to admire, there will still be something lacking. In the home of the fickle Gaul, even at Napoleon's tomb, the American boy is not in touch with his surroundings. Spain and Italy, while possessed of a wealth of antique beauty, are to us only echoes of a decayed and different civilization.

But, some sunny day in London, wander through Westminster Abbey and read the names. Some misty morning in Trafalgar Square, cast your eye upward to the form of Nelson, as he stands there in the fog, with the lions sleeping at the base of his column. In some leisure hour, visit the crypt of St. Paul's, where the car that bore Wellington to his rest still stands. Then, perhaps, you will appreciate the meaning of an old fogy when he tells you “There's nothing outside America which tugs at an American's heart-strings like the names and deeds and monuments of Old England.”

Don't let us deceive ourselves about it, either. Don't think or say that it is a better country than our own Don't let us be Anglomaniacs. That is not at all necessary. America is good enough for us. In many things: these blessed United States already equal any nation on the globe. In almost everything, time considered, they are a marvel. Within the past seventy years, American inventive genius has contributed more to make life easy, and to advance civilization, than all the world beside in many hundred years, if we except the inventions of printing and gunpowder. In future we may, and probably shall, become in all things the greatest nation that ever existed. But it is not disloyalty to your own country, and no disparagement of its greatness, to thank God that the people from whom we sprang were Englishmen, and that we have part and lot in England's glory.

In all America, there is no spot more emphatically English than the Kingdom of Accawmacke. Nay, more: there is many a spot in England to-day where the manners and customs of the population have changed more from what they were in the seventeenth century, than those of that little peninsula in America. Of the twenty-five thousand white people in the two counties of the eastern shore of Virginia, it is safe to say that four fifths of them are descendants of the earliest English settlers, and that there has been less infusion of foreign element there within the last three centuries than in many parts of England itself. But a few years ago, this writer sat in the old church at Bishops Lydeard Somersetshire, and looked over the congregation. The resemblance in appearance between the people assembled there and the congregations he had often seen in the Episcopal Church at Eastville, the first county seat of Accawmacke and in the Bruton Parish Church at Williamsburg, was striking.

The first John Wise married Hannah, eldest daughter of Captain Edmund Scarburgh. In 1655, we find him locating his grant from Governor Diggs on Nandua Creek, and in 1662, he was one of the first presiding justices of the newly formed county of Accawmacke In this year, also, the Indian chief Ekeekes, for “seven Dutch blankets” sold him the two thousand acre tract in Chesconesseck, named “Clifton” by its new purchaser - a tract of which the greater part descended without deed from father to son for six generations, until sold to pay the debts of the seventh heir, who was killed in 1864 in the American war between the States.

John, eldest son of the emigrant, married a Matilda, daughter of Lieutenant-Colonel John West and died in 1717. Their son John married a Scarbugh, daughter of Colonel Tully Robinson, and died in 1761. Their son John married Margaret, daughter of Colonel George Douglas, and died in 1770. Their son John married first a Mary, daughter of Judge James Henry and then a Sarah, daughter of General John Cropper, and died in 1813; and their son Henry, a younger son, was my father. Related to a great number of the people of his county; known to all; honored and respected for his high character and beloved for his widely known talents and eloquence, which had reflected honor upon the community, - father's return from Brazil to his home in Accomack was the occasion of great rejoicing and festivities upon the eastern shore.

No more beautiful spot for a dwelling-place can be found anywhere than his home named “Only.” It is located upon a bold estuary of the Chesapeake, called Onancock Creek, which comes down westwardly from its source, and, upon reaching Only, makes a graceful turn, first southward, then westward, then northward, and, curving like a horseshoe, incloses within its bend five acres of ground, with banks high above the stream and level as a table, on which stands a grove of noble oaks of the original growth.

In the neck of the horseshoe, with the grove behind it and a fan-shaped lawn of greensward before it, stood the mansion house. It was not a stately structure There are few such among the simple folk of this Peninsula. But it was a model of scrupulous neatness, every way fit for the residence of an unpretentious country gentleman, and, outside and inside, gave evidence of taste and refinement. On the eastern side of the lawn, a terraced garden ran down to the water's edge; and about the porches, roses, cape jessamines, and honeysuckles climbed in great luxuriance. Adjoining the house were the kitchen and quarters of the household slaves, and outside the lawn, beyond the terraced garden, were the barns, carriage-houses, stables, and cattle-pens. Still further away were the quarters occupied by the plantation slaves. Looking upstream, other pretty points were visible, on which, in groves, the picturesque dwellings of the neighbors were seen, and in the further distance was the village of Onancock, with its steeples, and sandy streets, and red-topped houses, and wharves swarming with boats of all sizes from the schooner to the skiff. Westward from Only, the stream courses broad and shining between sloping banks, on which, here and there, their greensward often coming down to the water's edge, stood other homes, which looked smaller and smaller in the distance. Far away, beyond a dim point of pines marking the mouth of Onancock Creek, the sparkling whitecaps of the bay are visible, with the sails of commerce passing up and down or turning in and out of the entrance to the creek.

On the beautiful November morning determined upon for welcoming my father on his return to the United States, relatives, neighbors, friends, clients, and political adherents began to assemble at Only.

Bright and early, activity was visible on the plantation. Under the wide-spreading oaks, long tables were improvised, covered with snowy linen, and groaning with everything good to eat. At several points under the bluffs, pits were dug where beeves and sheep and pigs were barbecued, and oysters and clams and crabs and fish were cooked by the bushel. Great hampers of food, sent from the village, or from the homes of neighbors, stood about the tables, ready for distribution when the feast should begin. The house itself, decorated with flowers and evergreens, was thrown wide open to the guests, and in the rooms of the first floor was spread a collation for the more distinguished visitors.

By eight o'clock in the morning, the earliest of the guests hove in sight. By ten o'clock, the grandees of the county began to arrive.

There were Colonel Joynes, the county clerk, Lorenzo Bell, the county attorney; the Arbuckles, the Custises the Finneys, the Waples; the Corbins from near the Maryland line; the Savages from Upshur's Neck; the Croppers from Bowman's Folly on the seaside; the Kneads from Mount Prospect; the Upshurs from Brownsville the Baylys from Mount Custis; and the Yerbys, the Nottinghams the Goffigons the Kennards, and Smiths from Northampton. But why enumerate? Their name was legion.

By midday the stables and stable-yards were filled; and the horses, fastened to the front-yard fence, formed a continuous line; while the creek about the grove was literally filled with small craft ranging from canoe to “pungy,” and a steamboat had arrived from Norfolk with a great company and a band of music. This band, playing in the grove, was an endless source of wonder and delight to many of the primitive people, who heard a brass band that day for the first, and no doubt, in some instances last time in their lives.

THE autumn of 1850 brought an event freighted with deep significance to me. My mother died. Although I was but four years old, it made a profound impression, and it exercised an incalculable influence upon my after life. My mother was a Northern woman, daughter of Hon. John Sergeant, a distinguished lawyer, and for many years representative in Congress from Philadelphia. Her people were of New England blood, identified with the earliest and most important events of the Plymouth Colony.

She had been taught to practice economy, simplicity, and scrupulous neatness and order. She was deeply religious, charitable, sympathetic, highly sentimental, and withal ambitions. She was one of those beautiful, refined creatures for which the City of Brotherly Love is famous. Hers was one of those extraordinary natures whose physical comeliness seems to make no injurious impression upon loveliness of character. Indeed, both in herself and with those about her, consideration of her appearance was subordinated to appreciation of her moral and intellectual beauty.

It was seven years after her marriage before she fully realized the vast difference between the life in which she had been reared and that into which her marriage had brought her. For, prior to their departure for Brazil, father, being in Congress, had resided for the most part in Washington, and had no fixed establishment in Virginia. In Brazil, social conditions had been strange to herself and husband alike. It was only on my father's return from Brazil - when the Virginia establishment was resumed - that she realized the vastly altered terms of her existence. It is fortunate it was so. It gave time for her wifely love to become fixed and deepened beyond disturbance; and residence in Brazil undoubtedly took away the shock of slavery as it existed at home. Coming now to a knowledge of Virginia slavery, it was much less repulsive than it would have been if she had been transplanted direct from Philadelphia. Notwithstanding this gradual change, the contrast was strong enough to make her fully realize the difference between the duties and the pleasures of her new home and those to which she had been accustomed in girlhood. Of the society about her she had nothing to complain. The good old people were of excellent social position, and Philadelphia was their social rendezvous. Many of them were acquaintances of her family. They were neighborly and congenial enough, and the means of intercommunication were excellent. One of lighter tastes, and less serious purpose and sense of duty, could easily have found, in her new surroundings, all the social enjoyment she desired, and might have been, quite happy and free from care.

But it was not so with the mistress of Only. She had too much of the old Puritan blood in her to ignore the word “duty.” She adored her husband, and was as ambitious as himself, which is saying a great deal. She knew that, if he was to maintain his professional and political prominence, she must assume her share of the duties of their domestic life; and when she fully realized what the meant for her, she doubted her ability to bear the burden it imposed; but, asking God to sustain her, resolved to try.

DURING the next three years, we had things pretty much our own way at home, as far as female control was concerned. The dear old aunt who presided over father's household, although we loved her very much, was too indulgent to be a successful manager of children; and while Eliza, the Irish nurse, was firm and strong enough, we were rapidly growing beyond her control.

Then there was my aunt's son, a most attractive fellow, just entering upon manhood, - a thorough-paced childspoiler. It was no uncommon thing for him to take me to the county seat, or the neighboring villages, where, while he pursued his amusements, I found companions and playmates that were improving neither to manners nor ideals of life. The association was delightful, nevertheless. On these excursions, there was no whim of fancy which that partial young relative was not more than ready to gratify. Our attachment was lifelong, and in after years the deep and abiding interest of my old-bachelor cousin in all that concerned me never abated until he died. At home, I had a thousand things to make boyhood happy. With the grown-up slaves I was a great favorite; and, as was often the case in plantation life, the little darkeys near my own age were my playmates and companions, and accepted me as their natural leader and chief. By the time I was eight years old, I could shoot, and ride, and fish, and swim, and sail a boat; I had a yoke of yearling oxen broken by myself; my own punt in which to go fishing; fishing-lines and crab-nets; a dog and a colt; and had become a breeder of most prolific chickens. Nothing pleased me more than dropping corn in planting-time, or hauling wood and straw with my own team. For months at a time I would go barefoot, during the summer season, dressed in brown linen and a straw hat. All this laid in a store of health and strength that was of great value in after years. In truth, I was a most bustling, energetic lad with no end of vitality, but lacked the parental government and care of a mother; and it was a blessed day for me when my father married again.

My father's third wife was a refined and cultivated woman, of suitable age, and possessed a most lovable disposition. It was not long before she established her dominion in our household, - a dominion of love.

I was taught to observe meal-times; to appear with hair brushed and face and hands washed; to attend family prayers; to spend less time at the negro quarters; to account more precisely for my nomadic wanderings; to devote regular hours to studies; and in many ways to adopt much more orderly methods than I had been accustomed to pursue of late. All which came in good time, for I was soon to become a city boy.

In 1855, a great political contest occurred in Virginia. A faction known as the Know-Nothing party, or the American party, had sprung up suddenly, and had triumphed in a number of the Northern States. It was a secret organization, with oaths and grips and passwords. Its rallying cry was that Americans should rule America. Incidental to this watchword was a real or fancied hostility to foreigners, particularly the Irish, and to the Catholic Church. Until it reached Virginia, it had been successful everywhere. Father believed in the teachings of George Washington that secret political organizations were dangerous to republican liberty, and in the teachings of Thomas Jefferson that no man should be proscribed on account of his religion. He maintained that neither Irish men nor other foreigners should be oppressed or ostracized by reason of their religious faith or their nationality.

The result of the approaching conflict seemed exceedingly doubtful when he was chosen as the Democratic candidate for governor of Virginia. The circumstances of his selection were not altogether flattering or hopeful. Many of his political associates preferred him as the man in their opinion best fit to make the desperate fight, but there were others who preferred him because they believed the struggle was hopeless and secretly desired his defeat. He accepted the nomination; and although, at the outset, the Know- Nothing party had an enrolled majority of ten thousand of the entire voters of the State, he entered upon one of the most remarkable campaigns in Virginia politics, and after a brilliant canvass was elected by ten thousand majority.

It is seldom a boy nine years old is deeply interested in politics, but this campaign was one that enlisted the intense enthusiasm of young and old.

In American politics, we have recurring periods of political “crazes.” Of late years we have witnessed several such. The Greenback craze, the Granger craze, the Silver craze, have each in its turn arisen, and, for the time being, made whole communities drunk with excitement. Friends of many years are estranged by these ephemeral issues. They are carried into business, into church, into the household, everywhere, until entire commonwealths are so wrought up that even women and children take part until election day, and after that we hear no more about them. Such commotions are like brushfires, which, igniting instantly, burn and crackle and fill the whole heavens with smoke, as if the world was on fire, and then die out as suddenly as they sprung up.

The Know-Nothing craze of 1855 was just such an excitement. Our community was divided into factions. Everybody took sides. Men who had never been known to show an active interest in politics became intense partisans, and political discussion went on everywhere. One of the first results experienced by me was a black eye and a bloody nose, received in a hard fight with the son of the village blacksmith. Exactly how the row began, neither of us could clearly explain; but we were on opposite sides, and that was sufficient. It was a drawn battle, for the blacksmith interfered, having no intention of losing a valuable trade by reason of political differences. In the little village of Onancock, the rival organizations found vent for their enthusiasm by building and flying two immense kites, with the names of their respective party candidates emblazoned on them conspicuously. Many an evening, after school was dismissed, I saw half of the villagers of the place out on the green flying their Know-Nothing and Democratic kites, as if the result depended upon which flew the highest.

In due course came election day. Father being absent, the young cousin above referred to represented him at the polling-place, and took me with him. In those days, voting was done openly, or viva voce, as it was called, and not by ballot. The election judges, who were magistrates, sat upon a bench with their clerks before them. Where practicable, it was customary for the candidate to be present in person, and to occupy a seat at the side of the judges. As the voter appeared, his name was called out in a loud voice. The judges inquired, “John Jones (or Bill Smith), for whom do you vote?” - for governor, or for whatever was the office to be filled. He replied by proclaiming the name of his favorite. Then the clerks enrolled the vote, and the judges announced it as enrolled. The representative of the candidate for whom he voted arose, bowed, and thanked him aloud; and his partisans often applauded.

All day long I sat upon my cousin's knee, or played about the platform. Nobody smiled more broadly, or applauded more vigorously, at votes cast for father; and nobody was more silent or haughty when votes were cast against him. At sundown, the polls were closed, and, to my infinite mortification, the majority at the precinct was announced as in favor of the Know-Nothings. The craze had simply taken possession of the place and run away with it. The ignorant and the vain had all been captured by the signs and grips and secret passwords of Know-Nothingism. For the first time in his life, father was defeated at his home. I thought we were done for. When we were safely bundled in the vehicle, and headed for home, I felt like crying, and the Know-Nothing cheers still rung in my ears most depressingly. What mortified me most of all was the fact that I knew of a bantering compact between the owners of the rival kites that the victorious party should own the kite of the vanquished, with the privilege of flying it tailless and upside down. The thought of seeing our beloved kite in such ignominious plight nearly prostrated me. As a matter of fact, the result at this precinct had been fully anticipated by the grown folks, and gave them no serious concern as to the general result. The Know-Nothing majority was really less than they had claimed. Seeing how I was cast down, my cousin, holding me between his legs in the one-seated buggy, endeavored to explain that there was no cause for alarm. Long before he finished, he discovered that, worn out by the fatigue and disappointment of the day, I was fast asleep, and in that condition he bore me into the house in his arms, laid me on the broad settee in the hall, and covered me with the lap-robe.

More cheering news from other places came thick and fast in the next few days, and it was not long before I was delightedly watching the Know-Nothing kite sailed tailless and upside down by father's friends.

Then came the preparations for removal of our residence to Richmond for four years.

No life could have been more in contrast with that at Only than the one to which I was now introduced. January 1, 1856, father took the oath of office as governor, and we proceeded to establish ourselves in the Government House, as it was called.

It is a fine old structure, simple in exterior, very capacious, surrounded by pleasant grounds, fronting the Capitol Square at Richmond. The house at Only seemed like a wren-box contrasted with this great residence. With play-grounds, and stables, and conservatory, and outhouses, it was indeed a most attractive place. Young gentlemen nine years of age are not apt to underestimate their own importance in such a situation, and I was no exception to this rule. The legislature was in session in the Capitol, and as a large majority of the members were in political sympathy with father, I received a great deal more attention and petting from them than was good for me. My bump of reverence never was over-developed, and under the influence of this sort of thing, I rapidly became very pert. But there were other directions in which I did not find life “all beer and skittles.”

A school was selected where, beside a decided lack of enthusiasm for any school, I found this particular one not altogether a bed of roses. Being the best school obtainable, it was attended by the sons of the most prominent people of the place. And therein lay the trouble. If their fathers' views had controlled the election of governor, our residence at Only would have been undisturbed. The city was the stronghold of Know-Nothingism in Virginia. In a vote of nearly four thousand, father had not received exceeding nine hundred votes, and they were for the most part from the humbler classes. The Richmond Democrats were so few in numbers that they were called the “Spartan Band.” The rural votes gave father his majority, especially in the splendid yeomanry of the Shenandoah Valley, among whom very few slaves were owned. They were the men who afterwards, drawn into the war to fight the slave-owners' battles, won with their valor the immortal fame of Stonewall Jackson.

Father had notions about manhood suffrage, public schools, the education and the elevation of the masses, and the gradual emancipation of the slaves, that did not suit the uncompromising views of people in places like Richmond. It was the abode of that class who proclaimed that they were Whigs, and that “Whigs knew each other by the instincts of gentlemen.” The slave market was a flourishing institution in Richmond, fully countenanced if not approved and defended. The majority of Richmond people hated the name of Democracy, and, almost always defeated by it, were willing to unite with the Know-Nothings or any other party to defeat their enemy the Democracy.

At school, I very soon discovered that the Richmond city boys were disposed to turn up their noses at me, not only as a country boy, but because I was my father's son. I had several fistic encounters with them, and after that things went on more smoothly, but not very pleasantly.

There never was such a place as Richmond for fighting among small boys. The city is built over a number of hills and valleys, and in those days the boys of particular localities associated in fighting bands, and called themselves Cats. Thus there were the Shockoe Hill Cats, the Church Hill Cats, the Basin Cats, the Oregon Hill Cats, the Navy Hill Cats, etc.

About this time we were seized with the military fever. In those days, the State of Virginia had a large armory at Richmond, and a standing army of a hundred men! The command was known as the “Public Guard,” but the Richmond boys called them the “Blind Pigs.” The syllogism by which this name was reached was unanswerable. They wore on their hats the letters P. G., which certainly is P I G without the I. And a pig without an eye is a blind pig. Q E D.

The public guard was as well drilled and oared for as any body of regulars in the United States army. It guarded the penitentiary and public grounds, and was a most valuable organization in many ways.

Captain Dimmock, commanding officer, was a West Pointer, I think, and the beau ideal of a soldier. His son Marion and my brother, three years my senior, conceived the idea of forming a boy's soldier company. Father encouraged the idea, and caused a hundred old muskets in the armory to be cut down to the proper size for boys. Captain Dimmock entered heartily into the scheme. The boys were drilled assiduously. Their uniform was neat cadet gray; and for several years the “Guard of the Metropolis” was one of the most striking institutions of Richmond. It always paraded with the Public Guard, and the precision of its drill astonished and delighted all beholders. Seven years later, William Johnson Pegram, the first lieutenant of that company, attained the rank of brigadier-general in Lee's army before he was twenty-one years old, and although killed in battle, is still remembered as one of the bravest and most brilliant artillery commanders of the civil war. Many other members were utilized as drill-masters at the outbreak of the war, and subsequently became excellent officers.

Too young to carry a musket, I was made marker of this famous company, and was as proud of my uniform and little marker's flag as a Frenchman of the Cross of the Legion of Honor.

THE present generation finds it difficult to realize the position in the Union occupied by Virginia, even as late as 1856-60, to which period our narrative now brings us. People recall, in a general way, that Virginia was once the theatre of many historic events; that she gave birth to many great men in the early days of the Republic; and that she was the chief battle-ground in the civil war.

A romantic interest attaches to her in consequence, and there is a certain tenderness for Virginia felt towards no other State, even in sections which were once arrayed against her.

But from many causes, a decline in her social and political importance has occurred within the last forty years, which, in its rapidity and in its extent, presents one of the most remarkable instances in history. Let us not stamp it as degeneracy. The day when she produced men of the type of Lee and Jackson is too recent to justify despair.

It is made doubly difficult to judge her by the character of the writings concerning her. On the one hand, we have extravagant eulogiums and fond laments of those who laud her old-time history and people, and admit no defects in them; on the other, the always unfair and often ignorant denunciations of the anti-slavery folk, who are unwilling to admit, even at this late day, that any good could come out of the Nazareth of slavery. Both are wide of the mark. The social and economic conditions of Virginia were neither utopian, as the one loves to depict, nor bad and vicious, as the other would represent them.

It is undeniably true that, between the two extremes of society, as it existed there prior to 1865, was an awful gulf, upon one side of which were green pastures and still waters, and on the other noisome bogs filled with creeping reptiles. It was a condition incompatible with every theory of republican equality among men, and beyond question repugnant to the ideas and sensibilities of free communities.

Whether what has followed will ultimately result in a better civilization is as yet far from settled; but whether for better or for worse, it is certain that a social, economic, and political earthquake, never surpassed in suddenness and destructive force, burst upon that people, working changes that have left little trace of what was there before.

If the Virginian who died forty years ago could revisit his native commonwealth, he would find it difficult to recognize the place where he lived. If he located it by the streams which still flow to the sea, and the mountains still standing as sentinels through the centuries, he would soon learn, even concerning these, that many are no longer landmarks of Virginia, but, snatched from her in the hour of her weakness against her will, are now possessions of an alien State. For the less enduring things, - for men such as he knew, for their very habitations, their mode of life, the fashion of thought of his day, for its wealth, its refinement, its culture, for its lofty incorruptibility and high-mindedness, - he would search sadly and in vain.

In the day of which I write, Virginia, among the States of the Union, was, in territorial area, second only to Texas. Her western boundary was the Ohio River; northward, her Panhandle projected high up between Ohio and Pennsylvania. Her wealth made her credit at home and abroad above question. Her bonds sold higher in New York and London than those of the federal government. Her political importance placed her sons in commanding positions in the cabinet, on the bench, and as representatives to many important foreign governments. In every national assemblage her voice was hearkened to as that of a potent and conservative and reliable guide.

Richmond was admittedly the centre of a society unsurpassed in all America for wealth, refinement, and culture. Nearly every distinguished foreigner felt that his view of America was incomplete unless he spent some time in the capitol of the Mother of States and Statesmen. Soldiers, authors, sculptors, artists, actors, and statesmen sought Richmond then as surely as to-day they visit New York and Boston.

The actual population of the city was small. It is difficult to realize that in 1860 Richmond had but thirty-eight thousand inhabitants. But the truth is, that its real constituency was much greater; for it was the assembling-point of a large class of wealthy persons who resided on their plantations upon the upper and lower James, and in Piedmont, Tidewater, and the South Side.

It is not uncommon nowadays to see references to Southern society of that period as uncultured, and rather sensual than intellectual in its tastes. This historic falsehood, like many others assiduously told for a long time, may find permanent lodgment in the belief of the future. No statement was ever more unjust. With inherited wealth, with abundant leisure, with desire to excel in directing thought, and to attain that command of men which knowledge affords, with an innate passion for oratory, a thorough education was the natural ambition of a Virginia gentleman. True, his efforts were not directed towards acquiring practical or scientific knowledge; for these were in those days possessed, for the most part, by men who expected to apply them to earning a livelihood. But in education in the classics, in the study of ancient and modern languages, in history, in philosophy moral and political, in the study of the science of government, in the learned professions, no men in America were better equipped than the wealthy Southerners of that period.

It is true, there was no public-school system, and the reason for it was very plain. The wealth of the upper classes enabled them to have private tutors. The paucity in numbers of the lower classes of the whites, and the distances at which they lived apart, rendered public schools impracticable for them. Education of the blacks was, of course, contrary to all ideas of slavery. Suppose we depended upon the wealthy to inaugurate public schools, - how many should we have? Yet nobody suspects that they are indifferent to education. The best proof of the care of the slaveholding Southerner for education may be found in the lives of distinguished Northern men who grew up fifty years ago. In many instances, they record the fact that their first employments were as tutors in wealthy Southern families. The private libraries of Virginia destroyed in the war, or burned in the old Virginia homesteads, would have filled every public library in the North to overflowing. Every current periodical and publication of that day, American and foreign, was upon the library table of the Virginian not later than it was in the Northern reading-room.

Conversation at social gatherings did not run to games and sports, and dress and dissipations, and gossip and amusements, but to the great events of the day, to the latest productions in literature and art, and to things worthy of man's noblest thought and discussion. It is an insult to the memory of those most intellectual people to describe the men as a breed of swearing, drinking, and gambling fox-hunters, and the women as pampered, candy-eating dolls. The per cent. of youth educated at foreign universities was greater in proportion to white population, at the outbreak of the war, in Virginia than in Massachusetts. This was natural, in view of the greater individual wealth.

It is true that every enterprise dependent upon what is known as public spirit, or originating in the demand or desire of common use, was sadly lacking. Wealthy people seldom coöperate. Each buys, for private use, things which all might well use in common if the price was an important consideration; and none, perhaps, have as much, or as good, as all might more cheaply obtain if they acted conjointly.

In times of slavery, there never was a decent hotel or public livery in the South. The private establishments were so large that their hospitality was deadly to the success of public houses, or other provision for the public comfort. Of a thousand or two thousand visitors to the city of Richmond, not one hundred would seek public accommodation. They either had town residences of their own, or were taken in charge by friends and relatives as soon as they reached the city. Everybody was kin to everybody. Visitors were ushered into vacant chambers that were already yearning for them, attended by the servants that were idle in their absence, furnished with equipages and horses that needed use and work, and fed of an abundance that had been wasted before they came. All this was repaid by their mere presence, which banished ennui, in those days when public amusements were rare and inferior.