PLANTATION LIFE
BEFORE
EMANCIPATION.

BY

R. Q. MALLARD, D. D.,

NEW ORLEANS, LA.

RICHMOND, VA.:
WHITTET & SHEPPERSON, 1001 MAIN STREET.
1892.

COPYRIGHT
BY
R. Q. MALLARD,
1892.

PRINTED BY
WHITTET & SHEPPERSON,
RICHMOND, VA.

TO THE MEMORY OF Charles Colcock Jones, D. D.,

WHO, WHETHER
HIS WORK AS A MISSIONARY
TO THE BLACKS,
OR THE WIDER INFLUENCE OF
HIS EXAMPLE, AND WRITINGS IN
THEIR BEHALF, BE CONSIDERED, IS
JUSTLY ENTITLED TO THE NAME OF THE
APOSTLE OF THE NEGRO SLAVES; AND OF HIS
MANY FELLOW WORKERS IN THE GOSPEL MINISTRY
UPON THE SAME FIELD, ONLY LESS CONSPICUOUS, SELF-DENYING
AND USEFUL; AND OF THE HOST OF MASTERS AND
MISTRESSES, WHOSE KINDNESS TO THE BODIES, AND EFFORTS
FOR THE SALVATION OF THE SOULS OF THE SUBJECT RACE
PROVIDENTIALLY PL ACED UNDER THEIR RULE AND
CARE, WILL BE READ OUT, WITH THEIR NAMES,
IN THE DAY WHEN "THE BOOKS SHALL BE
OPENED," AND "GOD SHALL BRING
EVERY WORK INTO JUDGMENT,
WITH EVERY SECRET THING,
WHETHER IT BE GOOD OR
WHETHER IT BE EVIL,"

THIS BOOK IS REVERENTLY AND LOVINGLY DEDICATED.

A Word to the Reader.

        In this graceful and vigorous vindication of her fellow-countrymen, quotation was made from an old faded copy of a printed report, made by Rev. Charles Colcock Jones, to the Liberty County Georgia "Association for the Religious Instruction of the Colored People." Having in the providence of God been brought into intimate relations with this eminent

servant of God, and personal acquaintance with his work, I found that by marriage I had come into possession of a bound volume of pamphlets, containing not only the report cited, but the entire series, thirteen in number, as well as all his many writings upon the same subject. This discovery of accessible and ample material for a fuller vindication of the memory of our ancestors, as well as my relations to the writer, as they constituted peculiar qualifications for, so they seemed to constitute a providential call to the work.

        These letters, thus prepared, met with general favor among the readers of our journal, and at the suggestion of white and black, and by the advice of prominent ministers of more than one denomination, they are now published in book form and seek a larger audience.

        The purpose of the author has been to portray a civilization now obsolete, to picture the relations of mutual attachment and kindness which in the main bound together master and servant, and to give this and future generations some correct idea of the noble work done by Southern masters and mistresses of all denominations for the salvation of the slave.

        If the reader shall have half the pleasure in perusing that the author has had in writing these letters; if they shall in any degree contribute to the restoration of the mutual relations of kindness and confidence characterizing the old regimé, and sorely strained, not so much by emancipation, as by the unhappy happy events immediately succeeding it; if through the blessing of him "who hath made of one blood all nations of men," North and South, shall be induced to join hands and hearts in generous, confiding and harmonious co-operative work for the salvation and consequent elevation of this race, dwelling with us in our common heritage, then will the author's purpose have been fully realized, and the country will have made sensible progress toward the solution of the race question, and the church gratifying advance in the settlement of a more interesting and important problem: How shall Africa in America be won for Christ?

R. Q. MALLARD.

NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA, December, 1891.

CONTENTS.

• A WORD TO THE READER, . . . . v
• CHAPTER I. REASONS FOR WRITING AND TOPICS OF LETTERS, . . . . 3
• CHAPTER II. THE WRITER'S CONNECTION WITH SLAVERY AND SLAVES, . . . . 8
• CHAPTER III. THE OLD PLANTATION, . . . . 14
• CHAPTER IV. OCCUPATIONS AND SPORTS, . . . . 20
• CHAPTER V. THE NEGRO - HOW HE WAS HOUSED, FED, CLOTHED, PHYSICKED, AND WORKED, . . . . 29
• CHAPTER VI. THE NEGRO - HOW HE WAS GOVERNED, . . . . 38
• CHAPTER VII. MARRIAGE AND FAMILY RELATIONS, . . . . 47
• CHAPTER VIII. "DADDY JACK" - A CURIOUS CHARACTER, . . . . 54

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  Page x

• CHAPTER IX. FOLK LORE OF THE NEGRO, . . . . 62
• CHAPTER X. OLD MIDWAY - A TYPICAL CHURCH, . . . . 74
• CHAPTER XI. SACRAMENT SUNDAY AT OLD MIDWAY, . . . . 81
• CHAPTER XII. A MISSIONARY TO THE BLACKS - A SKETCH OF HIS LIFE, . . . . 91
• CHAPTER XIII. A MISSIONARY TO THE BLACKS - HIS LABORS AMONG THEM, . . . . 101
• CHAPTER XIV. A MISSIONARY TO THE BLACKS - HIS LABORS FOR THEM, . . . . 111
• CHAPTER XV. A MISSIONARY TO THE BLACKS - HIS LABORS FOR THEM, . . . . 121
• CHAPTER XVI. RELIGIOUS ANECDOTES OF THE NEGRO, . . . . 130
• CHAPTER XVII. WHAT WAS DONE FOR THE NEGRO BY OTHER MEN AND WOMEN, MINISTERS, CHURCHES, AND COMMUNITIES, . . . . 141
• CHAPTER XVIII. THE SEA-BOARD OF SOUTH CAROLINA, . . . . 152
• CHAPTER XIX. PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF ANOTHER MISSIONARY TO THE BLACKS, . . . . 162

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  Page xi

• CHAPTER XX. THE FIRST SOUTHERN GENERAL ASSEMBLY, . . . . 172
• CHAPTER XXI. THE FIRST GENERAL ASSEMBLY AND THE NEGRO - ITS MANIFESTO ON THE SUBJECT TO THE CHURCH UNIVERSAL, . . . . 183
• CHAPTER XXII. TEE FIRST GENERAL ASSEMBLY AND THE NEGRO - THE ADDRESS OF DR. JONES ON THE RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION OF NEGROES, . . . . 194
• CHAPTER XXIII. CONDUCT OF THE NEGRO DURING THE WAR, . . . . 208
• CHAPTER XXIV. CONCLUSION, . . . . 233

PLANTATION LIFE
BEFORE EMANCIPATION.

CHAPTER I.
REASONS FOR WRITING AND TOPICS OF LETTERS.

        Our relief committee had gone to the front, in anticipation of a great battle, when, on the evening of the 19th instant, we received orders to fall back across the river. As the night drew on, and we sought to snatch a little sleep upon boxes and barrels, there mingled with the rumbling of the wheels the monotonous but pleasant tones of a boy's voice, that of a little drummer, perched upon the roof; and this was the ditty sung by him over and over again, with the ceaseless cadence of pounding feet:

                        "In eighteen sixty-one.
                        This war begun;
                        In eighteen sixty-four
                        This war will be o'er."

        The song was history; it had nearly proved prophecy. In the winter of 1864 the Confederacy was almost in its death throes, and in the following spring a handful of war-worn veterans tearfully folded the Stars and Bars, and our chief yielded up his knightly sword with a dignity only equalled by the magnanimity of the victor.

        For twelve years in succession I have had the pleasure of reading the annual addresses of Colonel

Charles C. Jones, Jr., LL. D., President of the "Confederate Survivors' Association," of Augusta, Ga. I do not remember one which has not feeling sketches of some dead comrades who wore the gray. It reminds us of the rapidity with which the actors in those scenes, already covered by the obliterating waters of a quarter century, are "crossing the river," we trust, "to rest in the shade of the trees." Since this continent shook with the tread of armed hosts, a new generation has sprung into manhood and womanhood, to whom war experiences and plantation life are only traditions. It has occurred to one who had attained his majority before the tocsin of war summoned North and South to the field, and who, from birth, was intimately associated with that which was, at least, the occasion of the tremendous conflict, that a short series of letters upon the topic at the head of this article might not only prove pleasing to those who have had similar experiences, and interesting to those readers who were born since, or who were too young to have any distinct recollection of either war or plantation life in slavery times, but would, at the same time, subserve some graver and more important purposes, to be developed

as we proceed. We shall have occasion to picture a civilization peculiar, and which can never be repeated in this country. Perhaps it will be seen that slavery, with all its confessed evils, was not "the sum of villainies," as some termed it, but had its redeeming qualities; that the common relations between master and slave were not of tyranny on the one side and of reluctant submission on the other; that our fathers, convinced that the institution was not in itself immoral, but scriptural, angered justly, and handicapped by the persistent efforts of Abolitionists to stir the slave even to insurrection, did much for the religious and mental elevation of their people.

         The topics, subject to modification, and contraction or expansion, as necessity may require or mood suggest, that will be treated of, are: to state them as they now lie in the writer's mind, such as these - the writer's connection with slavery and slaves; the old plantation described; plantation occupations and sports; houses, food, physic, work, government, and family relations; Sacrament Sunday on plantation; "Daddy Jack," a curious character; a missionary to the blacks; anecdotes, mainly religious, of the negro;

what the South did for his salvation and elevation; our First General Assembly and the negro; the slaves during the civil war, etc. Our letters will be brief, but, it is trusted, sufficiently full to accomplish the writer's purpose. May they, under God, result in renewing the kindly feelings which bound together the two races in the olden time, somewhat alienated, not simply by the results of the war, but by events since, which need not be named now, as they are past, let us hope forever. Possibly in the restoration of such feelings may lie at least an approximate solution of the race problem, now so deeply agitating the public mind.

CHAPTER II.
THE WRITER'S CONNECTION WITH SLAVERY AND SLAVES.

         The memories of that connection are of almost unmixed pleasure. In the interests of truth and candor, which I intend shall characterize these letters, I should here remark that at I saw slavery under its most favorable aspects. My home was in Liberty county, Ga., where that curse of Ireland, landlord

absenteeism, did not exist, the planters, almost without exception, visiting their plantations during the summer at least twice a week, and spending the six months, including the winter, among them; in this county, too, at the period when my recollections of slavery began, our people had enjoyed for some time the apostolical labors of Rev. C. C. Jones, D. D., nomen clarum et venerabile. It is believed, however, that my experience will be found typical of the general experience; for while the congestion of the negro population in the rice and sugar districts, and measurably in some parts of the cotton belt, was accompanied by evils elsewhere unknown, it is believed that the great majority of this race were distributed into smaller bodies, in more direct contact with their masters.

         As a babe, I drew a part at least of my nourishment from the generous breasts of a colored foster mother, and she and her infant son always held a peculiar place in my regards. A black nurse taught me, it is probable, my first steps and first words, and was as proud of both performances as the happy mother herself. With little dusky playmates, much of my holiday on the old plantation in the

winter season was passed. Some parents were in this matter more particular than mine. On one plantation, I remember, the rule was that the white and black children were both punished if found playing together. My association with them was, I admit, somewhat to the detriment of my grammar, a fault which my schoolmaster speedily remedied, but never to the damage of my morals; for be it recorded, to their everlasting honor, while their words were sometimes coarse, they were rarely vulgar, and never profane. My experience may have been exceptional, but I do not remember, even among the adults, a single profane swearer!

         With my little playmates I, as other children who are constantly rehearsing the drama of life, some times played at preaching; our pews, the leaf of a door set against the palings; three shingles, conveniently arranged, my pulpit; and a small book which I could not read, my Bible and hymn book; if the preaching was short and incoherent, the singing was neither. In my case this peculiar turn was not strange, for I bore the name of one of our pastors (the extent of the area occupied by the congregation during summer made the services of two necessary),

and my father's plantation residence being next but one the nearest to the church, and he a prominent officer of it, was the preacher's home. In those days the old Midway church was known far and wide; and many is the Northern preacher visiting the South (not to say Southern) who found a warm welcome beneath the roof of our paternal mansion. Among them a frequent guest was the venerable octogenarian, Rev. Dr. McWhir, a polished Irish gentleman, finished scholar and learned divine, who had taught a school of which Washington was a trustee, and was the minister to whom the President apologized for returning thanks in his presence, replying to Mrs. Washington's remark, "My dear, you forget that there is a clergyman at the table;" "My dear, I wished him to know that I am not a graceless man." Here, too, winter after winter, was entertained Rev. Dr. Ebenezer Porter, of Andover Seminary, then admired all over the country, as much for the soundness as the solid attainments of its learned faculty. I remember to have heard my father say that Dr. P. was accustomed to observe that he always felt like taking off his hat in the presence

of the grand old moss-covered live oaks, for which that region was and is noted.

         At college, to which I went with the lively sympathy and good wishes of our people, I recall the faithful service of Uncle Peter, and at the seminary of Uncle Jack, not to speak of their wives. In the up-country, the titles of respect which Southern children were taught never to omit, were "Uncle" and "Aunty;" in the low country it was "Daddy" and "Maumma."

         Coming events seem to have cast their shadows before them; for the child-preacher, when he came forth from the school of the prophets, began to preach to negroes in earnest, in their own special building (and a more appreciative and sympathizing audience he never has had); and in the old ancestral church, in which master and servant worshipped together, the colored people packing the wide, deep gallery, baptized from the same marble font, and taking the elements of bread and wine at the same time, from the silver baskets and gold-lined silver goblets, the gift of deceased slave-holders to the church. My first sole pastoral charge embraced a colored as well as a white membership, and among

the former were some of my most consistent and valued members and attentive listeners. A regular Sabbath-school for them, children and adults, was taught by my young people, using Dr. C. C. Jones' Catechism, a manual prepared especially for them. And they also drilled them in hymns and tunes. Catechumens were carefully instructed by the young pastor in his own parlor, using the same manual as his basis. Besides preaching to them, where comfortable accommodations were provided in the common church, a weekly lecture, for which he made the same preparation which he did for the lecture to the whites, was delivered to full and most appreciative congregations, in a neat church building built for them by the trustees (all slave owners) of a benevolent fund, left to the county by a deceased slaveholder.

        The unavoidable personal tinge given to this letter claims, as its justification, the necessity of establishing the competency and credibility of the witness.

CHAPTER III.
THE OLD PLANTATION.

         How we children watched with our keen eyes and ears for the first signs which nature gave of winter's approach! What joy it was to see the yellowing leaves of the old china trees, which grew near the academies and old Union church, the poverty of the soil hastening the process; to feel the evenings

growing cooler and cooler; to catch the first notes of "the six weeks' bird," which we implicitly believed always sang just that length of time before frost; to hear the woodman's axe, as he cut and split the great pine logs for the ordinarily unused fire-places of the summer home; and oh! the happiness to wake some bright morning and find the grass in the lawn all covered with mimic snow, and as we chased each other around the yard to mark the vapor pouring from our parted lips; we children called it "smoke!"

         Word is sent down to the plantation - and not soon enough for our impatience - there come to move such furniture as we carried from one home to the other the double-horse wagon, and the two slow-moving ox-carts. Before we can get ready to start, Stingo, the old yard dog, a beast of exceeding ill-temper, aggravated by age, and, I am sorry to say, by the plaguing of his young master, to which his churlish disposition naturally exposed him, divining the cause of the unusual stir, set out by himself, and all alone made the journey of fifteen miles of good road, ready on our arrival to take charge of the family in their winter home.

        Then the carriage and buggy are made ready, father, and mother, and children and nurse packed in, and we are, to our infinite delight, actually off at last for our winter holiday and the unspeakable joys of plantation life. On the way we halt at a clear spring, bubbling up by the roadside, and lunch, always, among other tempting edibles, upon shortened Johnny-cake! I wish it were in my power to give the housekeepers of our day the recipe; I only remember it was baked on a long clean board leaned before a wood fire, and was ambrosia to our healthy young appetites.

        Resuming our journey along the broad, splendid roads, worked every fall by details of plantation laborers, under white supervision, we pass the old church where we shall worship anon, and of which more hereafter; drive along the wide Sunbury highway a half mile or more, and then turn at a right angle into our avenue, lined with live oaks, leading up to the plantation mansion. It is an unpretending structure, a large and roomy cottage of one and a-half storey, unpainted, a chimney of brick at one end, of clay at the other, a piazza running around two sides, and its gable end facing the avenue. It

has only four glazed windows, two lighting the parlor, and the other two our parents' room just opposite, the panes small, and so imperfect that many is the time that our youthful imagination occupied itself, while waiting for the house-girl to kindle the fire in mother's chamber, in shaping its bubbles and defects into the images of different creatures. The parlor, the common living room, is papered with a pattern I have never seen elsewhere - a curious group of figures, which I see distinctly before me as I write. There is on the wide fireplace, with its fender and andirons, polished until you can see your face in them, a generous supply of oak and rich pine, but the big door leading out upon the piazza is persistently left open, I presume for ventilation, but bringing the sensations of freezing and burning into startling conjunction!

         The arrangement of the houses is somewhat peculiar, but convenient, and apparently made upon the principle of placing everything as far as possible under the master's eye. Looking out from the front door, you see on your right the smoke and meat house, made of yellow clay, in which the bacon (for our planter raises or purchases his hogs from his

own people) is cured and stored; on the left-hand corner, and in sight, is the kitchen, where French cooks are completely distanced in the production of wholesome, dainty and appetizing food; for if there is any one thing for which the African female intellect has natural genius, it is for cooking. Just over the palings of the front yard, you see the cotton houses, and directly in front the horse gin, with its wide branching arms carrying round and round all day the noisy rattling chain which turns the hickory rollers inside, with their lips separating the little black seeds from the fleecy lint, piling up in a growing bank of snow behind the screen. On the left, just beyond the stile (we called it the "blocks"), your eye takes in the stables and carriage-houses, and still farther away, and stretching to the left and in front, the single and double rows of cottages, the "quarters," the homes of the laborers, with their vegetable gardens, chicken coops, pig pens, rice ricks, and little store-houses. The only thing in the rear, and invisible from the front door, are the rice barns and winnowing house (for rice and Sea Island cotton constitute about in equal parts the market crop), and the vegetable garden, stocked with broad-headed

cabbages in winter, and with its beds of fragrant chrysanthemums and the sweetest roses I have ever smelt! On every hand, the corn fields, with their brown stalks, and cotton fields with their leafless black bushes, stretching away to the encircling forests, and beyond them on the left the road leading by two tall sweetgums to the rice fields, great lakes now, and frequented by water fowl, and fringed with the dense moss-draped cypress swamps.

         Such is a picture of the plantation home in which a large part of the sunny days of my childhood and youth were spent, and in immediate contact with the African race; and here for the present I close.

CHAPTER IV.
OCCUPATIONS AND SPORTS.

        Many of these were shared by the boys and girls of the family in their earlier years. These were, first, the almost daily visits to the cotton houses, where it was a pleasure to help the little slaves in beating up with switches the snowy cotton, as it lay upon the elevated scaffolding, airing in the winter's sunshine; or to take hold of the crank of the whipper, which, with its long revolving shaft, with numerous radiating spokes, separated the dust and trash from the cotton; and then to stand by the ginner and watch him, or be permitted for a few minutes ourselves to feed the grooved hickory rollers, as they draw in the fleecy cotton and divide the lint from the seed; or to supervise the packer, as suspended in his

distended bag from the upper floor, with many a grunt, he, with his heavy pestle, forces the lint into the bale. Then what joy it was, in the keen winter's air, to perch upon the long beam outside, and travel miles and miles in a circle, ever-repeating itself, permitted as a special favor, for which a plate from the dinner table was exacted and willingly promised, and paid ourselves to drive the team.

        At another time the barn-yard would be the special attraction, with its long parallel stacks of sheaves of golden rice. The dirt floor is beaten hard and swept clean, and the sheaves arranged upon it side by side; and now the stalwart laborers, with their hickory flails, beat off the heads of grain from the yellow straw; the obliging servants make for us children, or, if sufficiently skillful, we make ourselves, lighter flails, and, with our slighter blows, emulate in fun the heavier strokes of the men. And now the grain and broken straw are taken in baskets up the steps of the lofty winnowing house, which stands, stilt-like, upon its four upright posts; and as the grain and beaten straw are forced through a grated hole in the floor, the wind (faithfully whistled for) comes and carries off the chaff, and the round mound

of rice steadily grows beneath. The rhythmical beat of the numerous flails is accompanied by a recitative and improvised song of endless proportions, led by one musical voice, all joining in the chorus, and can be heard a mile away, "The joy of the harvest," of which a Hebrew prophet speaks.

         A spell of cold weather sets in, and now the well fattened hogs must be killed, dressed, and cured. We look on in the frosty air of the early morn, interested spectators, as the porkers are each dispatched by one dexterous blow of the axe, and then immersed in a cask of hot water to take off the hair, and aid in the trying up of the fat into lard and "cracklings," and, nothing loth, assist in the discussion at the family table of the spare-ribs and sausages; then there are horses to be ridden, and the difficult art acquired of keeping one's equilibrium upon the perilous edge of a frisky steed; then there are evening walks with our sisters up the long oak-lined avenue, and rambles through the encircling woods in pursuit of the black sloes and yellow haws and other winter berries. And then in early spring the cattle, turned out to graze in the fields and forests in the mild Southern winters, are to be hunted up and

penned, and the young calves marked and branded; the latter operation performed by the cowherds, and the former furnishing ample field for the exercise of our newly-acquired horsemanship.

         As we grow older, our sisters and us boys begin to separate in our pursuits for the most part. Now comes the savage age, the period of traps and bows and arrows; and many is the sparrow and robin brought home to our admiring sisters as trophies of our woodcraft and skillful marksmanship. From the Indian's implements, we are at last promoted to more civilized weapons, and actually (oh! height of a country boy's ambition!) own horse, saddle and bridle, dog and gun. Many now is the gray squirrel, and long-eared rabbit, and gentle-eyed dove, and plump partridge that falls under our new weapon. And, grown more ambitious, bird-shot is exchanged for duck and turkey-shot; and with my "man Friday" or boy "Dick" as inseparable companion, we are off for the rice-fields. In those days the teal and English ducks, as we called them, abounded in the two rice swamps between which the plantation was situated; and occasionally a flock of wild geese, to my intense excitement, settled down among them.

When frightened from their feeding-grounds by the passing of a wagon over the causeway bridges, or the sound of a gun, the water fowl took flight for a few minutes, to circle around and then to return, the noise of their wings was like that of a mighty rushing wind. The settlement of the Northern lakes, their breeding places even before I was grown, perceptibly diminished their numbers. Well do I remember the day when two fortunate successive shots brought me nine fat ducks, five of which I shouldered, leaving four for my faithful companion; and it was no light task to get them home. But I felt proud as Julius Cæsar decreed by the Roman Senate a triumph, and coming home from the war of Gaul or of Britain, when I passed the groups of servants about the cotton-houses and listened to their admiring comments. To secure these trophies I did not scruple, with my little comrade, to crush, barefooted and barelegged, a whole day through the thin ice which crusted the broad, overflowed rice fields, and suffered no harm. I was never tyrannical, as Southern boys generally were not, but sometimes a little positive and threatening in making Dick divest himself of pants, that he might cross

some deep canal, which his young master did not care, with his rolled-up trousers, to attempt, to get his dead birds. Later on, duck and turkey-shot gave way to buckshot; but of that I will not now write, because it would take me into manhood.

         Often I made adventurous voyages in the lake-like rice fields in my bateau, with its extemporized sail, and prudently provisioned with sweet potatoes roasted in a fire built on shore. Coffin shaped, when it was building in the street of "the quarters," the servants, as they came in from their work, with concern depicted in their faces, would ask, "Who is dead?" leading some of the family to predict that it would prove my coffin, which prediction, like many others as human, has proven false.

         Then, when the dog-wood flower whitened the forests, came the spring fishing, Our rice fields were drained by wide, deep canals, stocked with various kinds of fresh water fish - trouts, mud-fish, cats, eels, chubs, perch (I give our names without vouching for their correctness). "Golden's drain" ("dreen" my black companions termed it,) was the canal oftenest visited, and with best results. I can remember to this day the very appearance of the different

places where we broke our way through the sea myrtles to get the water's edge; and some positions inconveniently near the holes in the bank of two big alligators, male and female, which we had named.

         Later in the season, as the waters became low, our negro men and boys "churned" for fish - a sport in which I sometimes shared. The operation was this: A flour barrel was taken, both ends knocked out, and the hoops secured; then a half-dozen boys and men, thus provided, would range themselves across a canal, and moving in concert, would each bring his barrel at intervals down to the bottom. The moment a fish was covered, its presence was betrayed by its beating against the staves in its efforts to escape; when the fisherman instantly covered his barrel with his breast, and with his hands speedily capturing it, threw it to the little negroes on the dam, who quickly strung it upon stripped branches of the sea myrtle tree. How they managed to handle the cat fish, with its sharp and poisonous spines, I cannot imagine; perhaps their horny hands were impervious to them, as they were to the live coals of fire which I have often seen them

transfer with naked fingers from hearth to pipe; sometimes (an experience of which I have a lively personal recollection) a moccasin was covered, and then there was a rush to the shore, minus barrel.

         As the rice fields later in the spring dried up in the heat, they left exposed the holes of the alligators - an animal which, more frequently than we liked, fed on uncured bacon, and occasionally docked, without improving her beauty, the tail of some thirsty cow. And now a long, lithe, slender pole is cut, its larger end furnished with a stout iron hook, and a negro man wading up to his waist in the water, feels with it until he touches the living occupant, when with a dexterous turn he fastens the hook under the alligator's foreleg, and now commences the tug of war! He is by main force dragged (in which operation other willing hands join) to the land, the pole allowed to turn with his revolutions as he comes to the shore, hissing like a goose. By a well-aimed blow of the axe, his head, with its formidable armature of teeth, is severed from its dangerous muscle, and his almost equally formidable weapon, his sweeping tail, is paralyzed. Sometimes, when unable to find the saurian, the pole is withdrawn;

there are marks of teeth in startling proximity to the portion grasped by human hands! Well do I remember that, when somewhat callow, I would occasionally take to a tree until assured that the decapitation was a success!

         It is easy to see how such a life, in which white and black, with the due subordination of master and servant preserved, shared the same sports, contributed to the familiar and affectionate relations which so notoriously from childhood bound master and servant together; and how it gave the Southern youth a skill with fire-arms rarely attained in a shooting gallery, and a free, firm, and graceful seat in the saddle, seldom if ever acquired in the sawdust arena of a riding school; and how it developed a splendid physical manhood, unknown to the dwellers in the cities, with their billiard table exercise and theatrical diversions, and what is at best but a poor substitute for outdoor sports, the gymnasium.

CHAPTER V.
THE NEGRO - HOW HE WAS HOUSED, FED, CLOTHED, PHYSICKED, AND WORKED.

         The houseson some plantations were constructed of sawed lumber, furnished by the adjacent water- mills, or cut out by the negro sawyers laboriously, and not very accurately, with the whip-saw, worked in pen or pit, and making a tolerably fair joint possible. On our plantation they were, for the most part, covered with a weather-boarding of clapboards, split along the grain with what was called a frow, and from short cuts of cypress logs, and not admitting of a very close fitting. The houses were never lined within, so that only the thickness of a single

board kept out the winter's air and cold. Usually the house had two or more unglazed windows, and a front and a back door, and was warmed by a clay chimney, with a wide hearth, abundantly supplied with oak and pine. You entered first the common living room. Separated from it, and with its door, was the family bedroom; and if the children were half-grown, you would find frequently one or two "shed-rooms," or leantos, in the rear, furnishing all proper privacy. The furnishing of the servants' home was primitive. There were a few benches and a rude rocker, all of home manufacture; shelves in the corner, containing neatly scrubbed pails and "piggins," made by the plantation coopers of alternate strips of redolent white cypress and fragrant red cedar, bright tins and white and colored plates, with the never absent long-necked gourd dipper, and beneath them the ovens, pots and skillets, the simple but most efficient paraphernalia of the mother cook.

         The bedroom had a few boxes, containing the simple finery and Sunday clothes of the family; the week-day garments hung upon a string stretched across the corner; the bedstead consisted of a few boards nailed across a pair of trestles, and covered

with the soft black moss so abundantly yielded by the adjacent swamps, and quite a number of good warm blankets, in which the sleepers, oblivious of change of seasons, would wrap themselves up, until not a square inch of sable skin was exposed.

         Their foodwas mainly maize, which, where a public mill was handy, was ground for them; on my father's place they ground it themselves on the common hand mill; also the sweet potato, abounding in starch, the main nutritious ingredient in all food products; and easily and quickly cooked in the ashes, or baked before a fire. The weekly allowance for a "hand" or full worker was, I believe, a peck of corn, and four quarts additional for every child; and a half bushel of sweet potatoes to each adult, and to each child in same proportion. This weekly fare the year round was with us supplemented, in the season when the work was unusually heavy, by rations of molasses, or bacon, or salt fish; and an occasional beef. To this, thrifty servants added rice, of which they were as fond as the Chinese, and which they cultivated themselves in patches allotted them, and with seed and time afforded by their masters; and chickens and bacon of their own raising and curing, and fish

of their own catching. So abundant were the rations of corn, that at the end of a week the careful house-holder sent quite a bag of it to the store to be exchanged for calico or tobacco!

         As to their clothing, two good strong suits were given every year - in the summer, white Osnaburgs; in the winter, a kind of jeans, partly cotton and mostly wool, and stout brogans. The clothes were often cut and made up "in the big house" by negro seamstresses. The house-women were clad in a very neat fabric called "linsey woolsey," and with the house-boys fell heirs to the half-worn garments of the young masters and mistresses. A good warm blanket was given each worker every alternate year; so that a little care accumulated an abundance of warm bed covering.

         As for their physicing, this was largely, and not unskillfully, done by the planter himself. In each plantation library was a book of medicine - my father's, I remember, was "Ewell's Practice" - books written without technical phrases, clearly describing, in the language of the common people, diseases and their remedies. As the maladies of the African, with his simple civilization, were rarely obscure,

many planters acquired a very considerable skill in diagnosing and prescribing; and probably killed no more of their patients than the young M. D. graduate is said to kill, just in getting his hand in ! A big jug of castor oil was always on hand, but it had to be kept under lock and key, so fond was the darkey of dosing himself for any and every ailment with that antiquated and heroic remedy; another thing he had the utmost faith in was the lancet; for, according to his simple therapeutics, it let the bad blood out; just as rubbing a sprained ankle with cold water toward the toes would send the inflammation from their tips into nothingness! When a case, however, was too serious or complicated, or obscure, for the planter's knowledge or skill, or obstinately refused to yield to the few remedies of his materia medica, Tom or Jerry was mounted on a swift horse and sent post haste for the doctor, five or ten miles away! Whenever we met a negro riding furiously, we always divined, "Going for the doctor," and were seldom wrong. He only checked up his foaming steed long enough to confirm our surmise, for it was his peculiar joy to tell the news, especially if bad. The doctor, it must be admitted,

had but a poor chance either to cure or at his leisure to run up a bill, and this practice of only sending for his services in desperate cases depressed patient and doctor and nurses, and contributed sometimes to a fatal result. "To send for the doctor" was, in plantation belief, to give up the case; and the doctor's patients recovered only by a special miracle; but when they did not, they at least died secundem artem.

         As for their work, they were never called out in the rain, and open sheds were always provided in distant fields against thunder showers. In some parts of the South they were, with an interval of a noon day rest of several hours, in the field from "sun up" to "sun down," but in all such instances their food was cooked for them, and they were generously fed upon full rations of bacon. With us the work was, in the main, extremely light. It was the duty of the men to split the pine rails with which the plantation was enclosed, to clear the forest from the "new ground" prepared for tillage. The women and the "thrash gang" - i. e., the half grown boys and girls - made up the fences, the men commonly drove the plow, the women never handled anything thing heavier than the hoe; in the harvest both

used the sickle, the men threshed the rice and trod the cotton foot-gin, while to the women was assigned the easier task of sorting the lint of its specks and leaves. Our lands were light and friable and easily worked, and for a large part of spring and summer the hands were allotted task work; and many is the time I have in the spring season seen the industrious laborer shouldering his hoe, with the sun high in the sky, ready to work his own allotted patch in the rice field, or to go "churning" or lounging and gossiping in the village street!

         Compare the average house of the slave with the one-roomed mud hovel of the Irish tiller in Roman Catholic Ireland, with no privacy by day or night; the suitable and substantial clothing and bed covering supplied the slave with the scanty and sometimes ragged raiment of the poor in our great cities, and even laborers in our factories; their big fires, wood ad libitum, with the miserable, smouldering embers over which the poor sewing women crouch shivering in Northern cities; the excellent nursing and good medical attention given the slave, with the condition of many of the poor work-people, who dare not, or will not in their pride, call in a physician, for

whose services they are unable to pay; compare hours of labor in the open air, not pushed to exhaustion and comparatively short, with the long and drastic work of many artisans, against which there is a constant demand for restrictive legislation; and add to this the consideration, that if the white master lived in comparative luxury upon the fruit of the labor of his slaves, he had all the care and forethought and responsibility of directing and organizing the labor for united efficiency; in a word, that he supplemented the African brawn with Anglo-Saxon brain; and it will be perceived that no laboring population in the world were ever better off than the Southern slaves; and that there never was a falser accusation made against the Southern planter than this, harped upon by abolitionists of old, and repeated sometimes by Northern preachers now, that "he kept back the hire of the laborer." The plain truth is just this, that no tillers of the soil, in ancient or modern times, received such ample compensation for their labors. He was not paid down, it is true, in cash, but he was amply compensated for his toil in free quarters, free medical attention, free food, free firewood, free support of sick,

infirm, aged and young, and the free supply of that organizing faculty which utilized labor and made it more productive and capable of supporting, without the remotest fear of starvation, or even of scarcity, and without appeal to public charity, of entire slave communities, often as large as that of a good-sized village of whites!

CHAPTER VI.
THE NEGRO - NOW HE WAS GOVERNED.

the basis of the electoral apportionment. They were, so far as capital offences were concerned, amenable to the laws of the country. If a negro committed murder, he was, by white and black testimony, and the verdict of a white jury, condemned, and by a white judge sentenced, and by a white sheriff hung. But all other offences, such as are now carried by them into a justice's court, were adjudicated by the master, from whose decision there was no appeal.

         First, the master was the supreme authority on the plantation, in all matters but those in which human life was involved. Was a servant suspected of or caught thieving, or fighting, or beating his wife, he was summoned before the master, the witnesses heard, and justice, without appeal to innumerable authorities or the "law's delay," swiftly overtook the offender; the invariable penalty: so many lashes, according to the gravity of the offence. Over the house servants, the mistress had co-ordinate authority; indeed, the master seldom interfered in the domestic rule, save when called upon to assist. The sons and daughters of the planter also exercised a measure of authority, especially over the younger

slaves, although they never, as a rule, were allowed to punish offenders.

         Next to the planter in authority was the overseer. It was mainly upon large plantations, where the master needed aid, or where the plantation was owned by an unprotected female, or where the owner was habitually non-resident, that this important official was brought into requisition. He was usually a small planter, of acknowledged skill and experience and success, and ability to manage negroes. He usually lived on the place, in a house provided for him, getting a small salary in money, but allowed the use of horses, servants, food, and firewood. He was usually a man of family, and not infrequently saved enough to become in turn an owner of slaves and plantation. He exercised in the master's absence, authority over the slaves, with plenary power to punish offenders against plantation law and neglect of work, and his instrument was the lash.

         Next to him stood the negro driver. Dr. C. C. Jones studiously avoided the use of this term, calling that official on his plantations the "foreman;" but in reality the term in Southern ears had no more suggestiveness of cruelty to men than the phrase

"carriage-driver" has of cruelty to animals; and there was no more abuse of power ordinarily in the one case than in the other. The driver commonly carried what was known as a "cotton planter" - a short whip with heavy handle and tapering thong, plaited in one piece. It was usually worn around his shoulder, and was more a symbol of authority than an instrument of service; a reminder of the penalty of neglect than an implement of suffering.

         Now, in regard to the actual exercise of this power and authority by planter, overseer and driver, we hesitate not to affirm that it was, in the main, as humanely administered as the imperfection of human nature permitted. As for the lash, it was used rarely upon the bare back, or excessively; and it should be remembered that it is only recently that flogging with the cat-o'-nine tails has been abolished in the navy. Although all intelligent slave-holders agreed with Dr. Thornwell, that all that the owner was entitled to was the reasonable service of the slave, and control of time and person only so far as was necessary to secure that end, there were undoubtedly masters who, at least in practice, seemed to assume that they owned their bodies as well as

their service; masters who abused their authority to corrupt. I recall one instance now in the family of a favorite body-servant of my father, whose wife belonged to a wicked planter, although a professor of religion, in which, while only persuasion was used, the planter abused his position, with the consent of parents, to the ruin of a daughter; their insensibility to the sin and shame was to me the saddest part of the business. Then there were planters who were cruel. I recall in our county only two; the one a Southerner by birth. He flogged a slave to death! But the fellow-servants of his victim informed on him; the body was exhumed and their statements found correct, and upon their testimony and circumstantial proof he was, by a jury of indignant planters, sent to the Georgia penitentiary and ineffaceably branded as a felon. The other was a Northerner, and I remember to have heard the remark frequently made, that, while there were many honorable exceptions, as a general rule, the Northerners made the severest masters; and the explanation given was that they had not grown up with and formed attachments to the negro, and judged his capacity and energy by a white man's standard. This

man was a member of our ancestral church; actually had his cook up before the Session for not making the full tale of waffles, as I have heard my father laughingly tell. He was so miserly withal that on more than one occasion he was known to direct a belated traveller to the minister's house as the village hotel, who, after "taking his ease at mine inn," and calling for all he wanted for man and beast, was, upon asking his bill next morning, astounded to find how he had been duped! He was also credited with opening his ditches on Sunday in a wet spell of weather - a thing unheard of in that Sabbath-observing community - and of rationing his servants in part on sour oranges! It was his practice to canter on his horse from slave to slave and whip them in the cotton rows! My father related that he once came unexpectedly upon him just emerging from the woods with an armful of young hickories; unable to hide them, he mumbled out an apology about "the aggravating character of negroes!" Well, his people killed him finally, as he deserved to be! Striking him in the head with the eye of a hoe, they saddled his horse, and, whipping him, sent him flying through the big gate and across the bridge to

the town; and adroitly bloodying a knot which rose from one of the planks, they said that he had been thrown by his horse upon the bridge and instantly killed. Only a quarrel among them brought the killing to light a year after, when the body was taken up and examined and the story found correct. Several were convicted and hung. But I doubt not more sympathy was felt for the slave than the master. These were clearly exceptional cases, as rare, and no more indicative of general treatment of slaves than the conduct of the father who sat his child upon a red-hot stove to help him to recite the Shorter Catechism, is of the Northern Presbyterians' treatment of their children!

         Humanity to slaves was secured by more than one influence. First, the Southern planter was as kindhearted and naturally philanthropic as any class of men found anywhere; then with us he was usually a college-bred man and of liberal culture. Not a few of them were as noble Christian gentlemen as were ever produced by any civilization; then there was a powerful public sentiment, which ostracized a cruel master. In addition to this, self-interest exercised a powerful influence in restraining from cruel treatment.

Injury to the slave was pecuniary loss. A curious illustration of the potency of this principle came under my observation in our civil war. Planters, who cheerfully surrendered their sons to the army, protested against the use of their slaves in the trenches! Then, above all, there was a strong attachment between the master and the servant, the natural result of closest association from childhood, which made cruelty foreign to the very nature of the owner.

         As for the overseer, instances occur to me where the office was abused in both the directions just indicated. But these, again, were exceptional. The overseer usually enjoyed the protection of a family; wife and children throwing around him all the restraints of home life. He did not, perhaps, abuse his authority as a means of corruption, any more than the foreman of a factory; then, if cruel in his treatment, there was always the right of appeal to the owner. Convicted, the overseer received his "walking papers," his salary in full, with notice to leave as soon as he could get ready, and with a damaged reputation.

         As for the negro driver, much the same line of

remark applies to him. He was not sustained in his immorality, if he used his power to make life pleasant, or the reverse, to the women slaves to accomplish his purposes, and if cruel he was instantly deposed. The driver, the carpenter, the carriage driver and the house servant constituted the negro aristocracy. To be cast out of that favored circle of "the upper ten," was a disgrace almost more to be dreaded than death. There was all the dishonor in being "broken" as a driver, as it was termed, that there is in the army in being reduced to the ranks! It was by no means an unusual transaction, and occurred frequently enough to exercise a wholesome restraint upon the strong passions of the negro official.

         In our next we shall treat of the marriage and family relations of the negro.

CHAPTER VII.
MARRIAGE AND FAMILY RELATIONS.

         A slander, containing in it a measure of truth, is at once of the most offensive and dangerous kind. By it truth is dishonored, and error given what it does not in itself possess - vitality. Undoubtedly, there were not in slavery times marriages legalized

by such formal documents as licenses, issued by competent courts; and the master had, under the law, the power of separating, by sale or removal, husband and wife; as this was a right supposed, whether correctly or incorrectly, to be incident to ownership. In too many instances the marriage relation was thus broken up, not often voluntarily but frequently providentially, by the death or bankruptcy of the master. But I have known instances in which the greatest sacrifices were made by humane masters to keep husband and wife together. Let me give an example or two occurring under my own observation. Harry Stevens was a very valuable slave, for he was a carpenter, pursuing his trade in Liberty and the adjoining counties, and paying his master a sure monthly and handsome wage, while laying by something for himself and family. His wife and family were freed by their master and sent to Liberia. My father, in order not to separate the family, sacrificed half his value, or about $750 or $900, and the balance was made up by contributions of neighboring slave-holders, and Harry became a citizen of the free African Republic! I have known planters also to hire hands they

did not need, in order to keep husband and wife together. A service of this kind, which I had the opportunity of rendering to a favorite servant, was last summer gratefully recalled to my mind by his now aged widow.

         The impression sought apparently to be made by the statement upon which we are animadverting is, that the marriage relation among the slaves was very loose and far from sacred. On the contrary, in our county not only was it gladly celebrated by the white pastor or colored minister, but, where they were preferred, by negro watchmen, who were appointed by the church as a kind of under-shepherds, and duly authorized to solemnize marriages. We hesitate not to say that the marriages thus contracted were, by the slaves themselves and their masters, generally regarded quite as sacred as marriages solemnized with legal license of the courts; and the obligations as commonly observed as among the same class anywhere. There were as many faithful husbands and wives, we believe, as are to be found among the working white population in any land.

         The weddings of the house-girls were usually celebrated in the master's mansion - the bride decked

for the altar by the skillful needles and elegant taste of the young mistresses of the household. On a large sugar plantation in Louisiana, owned by a distinguished Bishop of the Episcopal church, who fell near Marietta, Ga., fighting for the South, all the marriages were celebrated in the great house. The broad hall was decorated for the occasion with evergreens and flowers, and illuminated with many lights. The honor coveted by the white children, and given as the reward of good behavior, was to hold aloft the silver candlesticks as the good Bishop read the marriage service. If the couple had seriously misbehaved, they were compelled by the master to atone for it by marriage; and in that case there was no display, but the guilty pair were summoned from the field, and in their working clothes, in the study without flowers or candles, were made husband and wife.

         On large sugar and cotton plantations marriages were not permitted with persons off the place. Even in such cases the choice was as wide as often falls to the lot of young white people living in a village community. In our county they were permitted to marry wherever they chose; and their almost universal

choice was of husbands and wives at a distance from one to fifteen miles.

         Saturday nights the roads were, in consequence, filled with men on their way to "wife house," each pedestrian, or horseman, bearing in a bag his soiled clothes and all the good things he could collect during the week, for the delectation of his household. Our cook, Maum Willoughby, used laughingly to say that before greeting Dublin, her husband, she always looked to see what he had brought in his bag for the family. This practice, of course, was not very good for family discipline; as the father was away from his child all the week, as indeed often occurs with white toilers everywhere, and they were left entirely to the management of the mother. Sometimes it made trouble on the plantation when the laborer came late to his Monday's task. It was, perhaps, due to this fact that news in our county spread like a prairie fire. The negro on his way to his family was as good as what was called in the war, "the grape vine telegraph."

         The negro almost invariably married, and married young, for there were no costly preparations to be made, no ambition of bride for a palace to be consulted.

A house was speedily erected by the plantation carpenter for the newly-married pair; as for food, raiment and medicine, that was the master's concern. I remember now but two negro bachelors, and I believe they only remained in single blessedness for a season. Of course, we would not hold them up as model parents; this they were not, and only too much disposed to resort to blows and slaps in family matters. But they were neither better nor worse, perhaps, than the working class of any country.

         As for the strange intimation, that violations of the seventh commandment were no bars to church communion in Southern churches, it is simply, so far as my acquaintance with the subject warrants positiveness of statement, notoriously and injuriously false. Two facts will be enough to prove this averment. In our county - and I suppose it was largely true elsewhere - the most frequent cause of suspension from church fellowship, and even excommunication, was offences against identically this commandment; and then, farther, while here and there, especially in the cities, were churches composed entirely of negroes, members and officers, such exclusive organizations were, as a matter of policy and safety, discouraged

generally at the South. As a rule, the churches of the South had a mixed membership, white and black; and if they had a negro preacher, he was usually under the control of the white pastor. To insinuate, then, that violations of the seventh commandment were, in the South, in slavery times, no bars to church communion, is to charge the white Christians of that section with a criminal complicity, which only a complete array of well-attested facts can redeem the author of the libel from the accusation of a wilful bearing of false witness against his neighbor. (Ex. xx.16.)

CHAPTER VIII.
"DADDY JACK." - A CURIOUS CHARACTER.

         "Daddy" - the title of respect low-country children of Georgia were taught to give every elderly

man servant - "Daddy Jack" was a queer negro. For example, he was mostly a bachelor. Single blessedness was so uncommon among the slaves, and for a reason already mentioned - the absolute easiness and certainty of the support of a family - that I now recall but two bachelors in my large acquaintance among them; and one of these, I learned last summer in a visit to my native county, had finally surrendered to the charms of the other sex, and, I believe, died in the yoke. Daddy Jack was a Benedict once, and for a short time. How it happened I am not able to say; whether it was leap-year or not I am not advised; but "Maum Nanny," a widow, ensnared him. My impression is she did most, if not all, of the courting, and the all-prevailing argument was her ability to cook a nice pot of hominy, or, better still, a savory mess of rice, and skillfully to bake a hoe cake!

         Their honeymoon must have been a tempestuous one, for, as the negroes were accustomed to express it, "they divided blankets,"perhaps, before the next "full of the moon." Nor was this to be wondered at, for he was, like Rip Van Winkle, a shiftless, good-natured fellow; but, unlike him, full of

oddities that did not minister to a wife's comfort He was at once the idlest and the most industrious slave on the plantation; indolent where his own interests were concerned, active where his master's were affected.

         I recall now the report of one of my dusky playmates, of what he had just seen and heard, and in his lingo: "As I bin gwine long de street, and pass Buh Jack house, I yeddy somebody duh whistle, and I look in de door and I see Buh Jack a sitten on de jice and pullin' down de shingles to make fire wid!"

         Most of our readers have heard of the Arkansas traveller, who, accosting a man playing on his fiddle beside the door of his ruined cabin, with the question, "Friend, why don't you mend your roof," receives (the bow suspended only for a minute for the purpose) this answer: "When the sun shines, I don't need to, and when it rains I can't." Daddy Jack made the leaks with his own hand, and ran the risk of a wetting to insure a warming! From the same authority, I also learned that a straw hat which my father had given him had been used by the improvident fellow in kindling the fire.

         My father had a great fondness for him, and gave

him two suits of clothing where the rest received one; and a blanket every year, instead, as was common, every alternate year; but as he was unaccustomed to the use of thimble and needle, and generally had no wife or sister to mend for him, his clothing was not always presentable; his newest blanket was speedily in holes from a habit he had. In his room (parlor, chamber, and kitchen, all in one), I do not remember to have seen any sleeping accommodations. I doubt if he ever undressed and went regularly to bed; his habit was to rake aside the fire coals and then spread his blanket upon the ashes of the hearth, where he could feel its grateful warmth. Whether he temporarily altered his sleeping habits upon the advent of his bride, we cannot say, but think it doubtful.

         I have read of some race that, by a singular inconsistency, are nice about their persons, but not cleanly about their clothing. Our friend, perhaps, never washed his garments, and he had no female friend to do it for him, but he was a diligent bather. At midnight, in mid winter, he would divest himself of all his clothing, and plunge into the "calf-hole," an excavation made to contain water for the younger cattle.

Almost too idle to cook his own food, he would, as my playmates laughingly said, "work all day for one spoonful of hominy!" I have often heard him at the hand-mill long before I, an early riser, was up, grinding corn for some trifling reward.

         My father gave him, as he did the rest of the people, a piece of good land to cultivate in rice, of which he was as fond as any Chinaman, and provided the seed; well, he had to order the driver to flog him to make him turn up the soil; and then he defeated the master's kind design by beating out the rice and planting his plot with the chaff.

         I never knew him to be sick for a day, and he was never behind-hand in his tasks, and never punished for idleness where his master's work was concerned.

         With all, Daddy Jack was a professing Christian, and called himself a Presbyterian; but, as like as not, he had not the first conception what the word meant, except that it signalized the fact that he once "jined" Midway Church, and not Newport, the Baptist, and had been sprinkled and not dipped. He was, no doubt, regular in attendance upon plantation prayers, and sung loudly, when not asleep, and sometimes when he was; and was always in his place

at church, especially "Sacrament Sunday." Daddy Jack had a profound conviction of the reality of both heaven and hell. He was very sure two people of his acquaintance were bound for the better of the two - "Old Miss and Mass William." "He knew their calling and election" by this token, the generous plates of victuals they were accustomed to send the faithful servant from their tables. Perhaps he had scriptural ground for this persuasion; for was he not one of the "little ones" to whom "the cup of cold water," or its more valued cup of hot coffee, "was given in the name of a disciple," and one of the hungry brethren whom they had fed and concerning whom the Master would say, "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me."

         The death of my honored parents - the one scarcely disturbed in her last hours by the guns of Fort Sumter; the other, after a few weeks, on the next national anniversary, following the companion of fifty years' happy wedded life into the Beyond - caused a division of property, and Daddy Jack passed to one of my married sisters in the same county.

        The war went on, and I removed to a distant part of the State, and after it to Louisiana, and so I lost sight of Daddy Jack for a time, but I hope some day to meet the dear old shiftless, good-natured, harmless fellow in the better land, where all that was defective in his organization and character will have been removed.

         Recently I heard a colored bishop of the Methodist Church exclaim, in an earnest address: "Some ask, 'will we have the same color in heaven we have had on earth?' This I do not care to know; all I wish is to make sure of getting there, and not being barely saved, but going 'sweeping through the gates.' "

         We cannot tell what changes will be effected at the resurrection in the bodies of the saved; but some of the whitest souls I have ever known dwelt in the blackest of skins! Perhaps, and if some commentators are correct, certainly, if color, as well as servitude, was a part of the curse denounced upon Canaan for the sin of Ham, it will be changed. But this we do know, that nothing will sever the chain of holy love which in heaven will forever bind heart to heart, and all to the God of love; for hear the

beloved John: "After this I beheld, and lo! a great multitude, whom no man could number, of all nations and kindreds and tongues, stood before the throne, and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes, and palms in their hands." And to him the angel makes answer concerning them: "These are they which came out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb."

CHAPTER IX.
FOLK LORE OF THE NEGRO.

         Here I hope I may be permitted, in accordance with the general spirit and tenor of these letters which are designedly and largely the testimony of one who narrates what he has seen and heard, to recall some childhood experiences. Before we were considered old enough to attend evening religious services, we children were left at home in charge of the house servants, who were accustomed to entertain us by the relation of negro fables.

         Not a few Southern writers, notably our own Ruth McEnery Stuart, have, in the field of fiction, correctly portrayed both negro character and dialect; the author named, with a pathos and sympathy with her lowly subjects, which often exacts from

those who knew the negro before emancipation the involuntary tribute of tears: but only two of them have wrought in the rich field of the negro folk lore - Joel Chandler Harris and Charles C. Jones, Jr. The fables related by these last mentioned writers were, in the main, those recounted at the planter's fireside to the never weary youthful auditors. With Joel Chandler Harris's recitals, the thousands of the readers of the Century have been made familiar in the narratives of "Uncle Remus;" not so many have perused the account of them in a little book from the press of Houghton, Mifflin & Co., entitled, "Negro Myths from the Georgia Coast, told in the vernacular," by Charles C. Jones, Jr., LL. D. Reared in the same community with the latter author, I desire to testify to its literal accuracy in story and dialect. There is not a particle of fiction in either. I learned from him that they were taken down from the lips of old negroes in Liberty county, Ga. The dedication of this little volume is characteristic, but will be no surprise to those who had any knowledge of domestic service in the South before emancipation: "In memory of Monte Video Plantation, and of the family servants,

whose fidelity and affection contributed so materially to its comfort and happiness."

         Let me again bear my testimony as one who was by marriage, a frequent visitor, and for weeks at a time, a fortunate resident beneath the roof which sheltered the ""Apostle to the blacks," and the author who, as his eldest born, bears his father's honored name, in one of those typical Southern homes, in which polish and culture were combined with piety, to the fact that these family servants were all that the dedication of their once young master portrays them to have been.

         Between these stories of two authors, there is, as might have been expected, some sameness, as they were conscientious workers in the same general field; but a perceptible variation in their versions and dialect, due to the fact that they wrought in different parts of it - Mr. Harris giving the dialect and folk lore of the negroes of middle Georgia, and Mr. Jones those of the negroes of the coasts of Georgia and of South Carolina.

         As the seaboard was first settled and supplied with African labor, it is evident that the fables preserved and recorded by the latter author have the

preference as the originals. I have, in my partial investigations, been astonished to find how far these fables have spread into the interior, and how, with natural and, in some instances, most amusing variations, they have been transmitted by tradition with substantial correctness. President George J. Ramsey, of Silliman Collegiate Institute, Clinton, La., tells me that in the last years of the war, he, as a child, heard "Uncle Remus" fables in East Virginia; and our servant man, who was a Federal soldier in the war, gives me substantially the story of the Tar Baby at the Well, as told in Negro Myths, but with a laughable variation in its ending - perhaps a Louisiana addition.

         I will now, from the fifty-seven originals collected by Charles C. Jones, Jr., give two specimens:

BUH SQUIRLE AND BUH FOX.

bague Buh Fox let um go. Buh Fox tell um, say eh bin er try fuh ketch em long time, but he hab sich sharpe yeye, an keen yez, an spry leg, eh manage fuh dodge um; an now wen he got um at las, eh mean to fuh kill um an eat um. Wen Buh Squirle find out dat Buh Fox yent bin gwine pity um an tun um loose, but dat eh fix fuh kill um and eat um, Buh Squirle say to Buh Fox: "Enty you know say, nobody ought to eat eh bittle befo eh say grace ober um?" Buh Fox him mek answer: "Dat so;" and wid dat, eh pit Buh Squirle een front er um, an he fall on he knee, an kibber eh yeye wid eh han, an eh tun een fuh say grace.

         While Buh Fox bin do dis, Buh Squirle manage for slip way; an wen Buh Fox open eh yeye, eh see Buh Squirle duh run up de tree way him couldn't tetch him.

         Buh Fox fine eh couldn't help ehself, an eh call arter Buh Squirle, an he say: "Nummine boy, you done git way now, but de nex time me clap dis han topper you, me giune eat you fus and say grace arterward."

         Best plan fuh er man fuh mek sho er eh bittle befo eh say tenkey fur um!

BUH WOLF, BUH RABBIT, AN DE TAR BABY.

         One day eh meet Buh Rabbit in de big road, an ax um, how eh mek out fuh water. Buh Rabbit say: "Him no casion fuh hunt water; him lib off de jew on de grass." Buh Wolf quire: " Enty yuh blan tek water outer my spring?" Buh Rabbit say: "Me yent." Buh Wolf say: "You yis, enty me see you track?" Buh Rabbit mek answer: "Yent me gwine to your spring, mus be some udder rabbit; me nebber been nigh you spring; me dunno way you spring day."

         Buh Wolf no question um no more; but eh know say eh bin Buh Rabbit fuh true, an eh fix plan fuh ketch um.

De same ebenin, eh mek tar baby, an eh guine, an set um right in de middle er de trail wuh lead ter de spring an dust in front er de spring.

         Soon a mornin, Buh Rabbit rise and tun in fuh cook he bittle. Eh pot biggin fuh bun. Buh Rabbit say: "Hey! my pot duh bun. Lemme slip to Buh Wolf spring an git some water fuh cool um." So he tek eh calabash and hop off fuh de spring. When eh ketch de spring, eh see de tar baby duh stan dust een front er de spring. Eh stonish. Eh stop. Eh come close. Eh look at um. Eh wait fur um fuh move. De tar baby yent notice um. Eh yent wink eh yeye. Eh yent say nuttin. Eh yent mobe. Buh Rabbit, him say: "Hey, Titer, enty you gwine tan one side and lemme get some water? " De tar baby no answer. Den Buh Rabbit say: "Leely gal, mobe, me tell you, so me kin dip some water outer de spring long my calabash." De tar baby wunt move. Buh Rabbit say: "Enty to know my pot duh bun? Enty you yeddy, me tell you fuh mobe? You see dis han? Ef you don't go long an lemme git some water, me guine slap you ober!" De tar baby stan day. Buh Rabbit haul off an slap um side de head. Eh fastne. Buh Rabbit

try fuh pull eh hen back, an eh say: ""Wuh you hole me han fuh? Lemme go. Ef you don't loose me, me guine box de life outer you wid dis tarrah han." De tar baby yent crack eh teet. Buh Rabbit hit him bim wid dis tarrah han. Dat han fastne too, same luk tudder. Buh Rabbit say: "Wuh you up teh? Tun me loose. Ef you don't leggo me right off, me guine knee you." De tar baby hole um fast. Buh Rabbit skade an bex too. Eh faid Buh Wolf come ketch um. Wen eh fine eh can't loosne eh hen, eh kick de tar baby wid eh knee. Eh knee fastne. Yuh de big trouble now. Buh Rabbit skade den wus dan nebber. Eh try to fuh skade de tar baby. Eh say: "Leely gal, you better mine who you fool long. Me tell you fuh de las time, turn me loose! Ef you don't loosne me han and me knee right off, we guine bust you wide open wid dis head." De tar baby hole um fast. Eh yent say one wud. Den Buh Rabbit butt de tar baby een eh face. Eh head fastne same fashion luk eh han an eh knee. Yuh de ting now! Po Buh Rabbit dune for! Eh fastne all side. Eh can't pull loose. Eh gib up. Eh bague. Eh cry. Eh holler. Buh Wolf yeddy um. Eh run day. Eh hail Buh Rabbit:

"Hey, Budder, wuh de trouble? Enty you tell me you no blan wisit my spring fuh git water? Who calabash dis? Wuh you duh do you any how?" But Buh Rabbit, so condemn, he yent hab one wud fuh talk. Buh Wolf him say: "" Nummine, I dune ketch you dis day. I guine lick you now!" Buh Rabbit bague. Eh prommus nebber fuh trouble Buh Wolf spring no more. Buh Wolf laugh at um. Den he tek an lose Buh Rabbit from de tar baby, en eh tie um teh one sparkleberry bush, an git switch an eh lick um til eh tired. All de time Buh Rabbit bin a bague an holler. Buh Wolf yent duh listne ter him, but eh keep on duh pit de lick ter um. At last Buh Rabbitt tell Buh Wolf: "Don't lick me no mo. Kill me one time. Make fire and burn me up. Knock my brains out gin de tree!" Buh Wolf mek answer: "Ef I bun you up, ef I knock you brains out, you guine dead too quick. Me guine trow you in de brier patch, so de briers can cratch you life out." Buh Rabbit say: "Do, Buh Wolf, bun me, brake me neck, but don't trow me in de brier patch. Lemme dead one time. Don't terrify me no mo."

         Buh Wolf yent know wuh Buh Rabbit up teh

Eh tink eh bin tare Buh Rabbit hide off. So wuh eh do? Eh loose Buh Rabbit from the spakleberry bush. and eh tek um by de hine leg an eh swing um roun, an trow um way in de tick brier patch fuh tare eh hide, and scratch eh yeye out. De minnie Buh Rabbit drap in de brier patch, eh cock up eh tail, eh jump, an holler back to Buh Wolf: "Good bye, budder! Dis de place me mammy fotch me up!" and eh gone befo Buh Wolf kin ketch um. Buh Rabbit too schemy.

        The first of these fables, in the raciness of its wit, equals anything in Æsop.

        To the other, our Louisiana negro man contributes this amusing variation as its close, which also illustrates the "scheminess" of Buh Rabbit:

        "Buh Bear comes along and finds Buh Rabbit in the involuntary embrace of 'the leely gal,' the tar baby, and inquires as follows: 'Hey! Buh Rabbit, wat you duh da?' Says Buh Rabbit, moving to and fro as far as his imprisoned members will admit: 'Oh, I duh see-saw; wouldn't you like to see-saw, Buh Bear ?' 'Yes,' says Buh Bear, in his innocence. 'Well, pull me off and you git on.' Buh Rabbit released, Bruin takes his place; and while

stuck fast is taken for the thief. Buh Rabbit takes himself off; and Buh Wolf beats Buh Bear almost to death!"

         These stories are almost entirely and purely fables - that is, narratives in which animals are endowed with speech; only to a very limited degree do human beings figure in them. They are never, except in the remotest sense, religious, and seldom, if ever, rise above the level of the ethics of Benjamin Franklin's proverbs. If any criticism is proper from a moral standpoint, I should say that they, or some of them, glorify cunning and falsehood at the expense of honesty and truth, but in such a way that we cannot but laugh at the story, while we withhold our admiration from its teachings. It is also a curious fact that (for what reason we are at a loss to say) the Rabbit is the embodiment of smartness, and not the Fox, the Anglo-Saxon's model of cunning, and who, by the way, in the story quoted, is outwitted by the Squirrel.

         The literary world is greatly indebted to the two Georgia authors named, for rescuing from the incoming tide of oblivion, which is fast obliterating all that was peculiar in the past civilization of a people

who were the innocent cause of the bloodiest and most transforming war of modern times. For, strange to say, and I now speak from the testimony of the author of "The Negro Myths," who found much reluctance in communicating them, and from my own observation in the case of a negro woman whom I had raised, that not only are the new ideas engendered by freedom supplanting this folk lore, but the religion as now taught among them by their colored preachers is setting itself against their narration as sinful. They did not perceptibly harm the morals of Southern children, black or white, and were infinitely preferable to the blood-curdling ghost stories with which some nurses terrify the young in our day. They are certainly, in the matter of injurious influence, not to be compared to the dime novels, to which the almost universal acquisition of the art of reading gives our young Africans unrestricted access.

CHAPTER X.
OLD MIDWAY - A TYPICAL CHURCH.

         The church edifice, which was situated in Liberty, one of the seaboard counties of Georgia, thirty miles southwest of Savannah, was called "Midway," because equi-distant between the two great rivers - the Savannah and the Alatamaha. It was central to a very rich but malarial region, whose original growth was cane, oak, hickory and cypress.

         Bearing in colonial times the name of "St. John's Parish," the county received by legislative enactment shortly after the Revolution, the honorable title of

"Liberty," in commemoration of its plucky conduct in taking decided measures to join the other colonies in their revolt, when the Provincial Council of Georgia had refused to unite with them! It is a remarkable and noteworthy fact, that a county which perhaps never had more than between two or three thousand whites, had thus the honor of contributing two signatures to that immortal document, the Declaration of Independence - Lyman Hall and Button Gwinnett.

         Made rudely acquainted in earlier times with the torch and tomahawk of the savage, it was her destiny in the Revolution, as more recently in our civil war, to know the baptism of fire and blood. Col. Prevost, of the British Army, burned the rice in stacks, and some of the houses of the planters, and reduced to ashes the sacred edifice in which they had worshiped the God of their fathers. General Screven was killed not far from the church site. Col. McIntosh, one of her gallant sons, who commanded the small earthen redoubt protecting her flourishing little seaport of Sunbury, at the mouth of the Midway, to the demand of Col. Fuser, of unconditional surrender, returned the laconic reply:

"Come and take it!" - an invitation finally and prudently declined by the commander of his Majesty's forces? When Washington visited Georgia in 1791 the "Congregational Church and Society at Midway" presented to him a patriotic address, to which the Father of his Country made a fitting and handsome reply.

         This early and ardent espousal of the cause of the revolting colonies by the church and society of Midway is, perhaps, to be accounted for by the naturally stron gties which still bound them to New England. Their ancestors came from Britain to secure liberty of worship, and first settled not far from what is now the city of Boston, at an Indian town, which, in honor of the native place of some of the settlers, and of a cherished minister, they called Dorchester. Sixty years afterwards their descendants, largely influenced by religious motives, moved as a church, with their pastor, Rev. Joseph Lord, a Congregational minister, to South Carolina, and settled on the Ashley river, about eighteen miles above Charleston. This settlement they also called Dorchester. After a residence of more than fifty years, finding their lands impoverished and insufficient for

themselves and descendants, and somewhat discouraged by their continued unhealthiness, they again emigrated in a body, under their pastor and officers, to Georgia, and effected a settlement in a district at the headwaters of the Midway and Newport rivers, two short tide-water streams, draining what is now known as Liberty county. Coming to this wild country as a church, they secured from the colonial government a large tract of land, compactly situated; and by articles of agreement the colonists pledged themselves not to alienate any of their land to outsiders, save with the unanimous consent of the society. They speedily built a neat church, or "meeting-house," as it is called in the records, "at the cross-paths," at a point central to the settlement. Their first pastor at least was a Congregational minister, and the government of the church somewhat peculiar. It was not purely Congregational; for the control of church matters was not in the hands of the whole society, but of a session, composed of all the male members, without respect to age. Their officers were deacons and a body of "select men" as they were called. Every year the church went through the routine of electing

a pastor. Retaining this nondescript form of church government down to our late war, the church has from early times been served by Presbyterian ministers only, and its members have always regarded themselves as Presbyterians.

         Puritan by ancestry, they were a pre-eminently godly people; first in their estimation was the church, and next the school-house. The Sabbath was strictly observed. One of the church officers was also justice of the peace. Should some traveler attempt to pass on the Lord's day with his wagons and teams on the public highway, running by the church, he was by this zealous administrator of law, human and divine, peremptorily halted; but then taken home with him and freely and most hospitably entertained, he and his beasts, and on Monday sent on his way rejoicing, with a hearty Godspeed!

         The Westminster Assembly's Shorter Catechism was diligently taught in all its families. Celebrating some time before the late war its centennial, this remarkable church (not to exhaust the roll-call of its worthies) has furnished more than one theological professor, such as Rev. Drs. Thomas Golding and C. C. Jones; forty ministers of the gospel,

not a few of whom have been eminent for their talents and piety, for example, Rev. Dr. Daniel Baker; a number of distinguished physicians and college professors, not a few of them known in the scientific world, as for instance, Dr. Joseph Jones, of New Orleans, and the brothers Le Conte, of California. It has given eminent men to the bar, such as Judge Law, late of Savannah, Col. C. C. Jones, Jr., LL. D., of Augusta, Ga., and others; it has supplied teachers by the hundred, and has trained (only the judgment can reveal how many) a multitude of saved sinners for heaven, and by her liberal gifts of means and of men, like Way and Quarterman, to foreign missions, has helped to extend the kingdom of our Lord and Saviour in the world.

         The war wrote "Finis" on the last page of this remarkable and honorable history. The changed relations of master and servant have consolidated the blacks in this region, and scattered the whites into the remoter and healthier parts of the county. A colored Presbyterian church, under a white pastor, and in connection with the Northern Assembly, are now the only worshipers in the sacred edifice - built in 1790. It is now, by permission of the descendants

of the white members, used by the negroes, upon the easy terms of keeping in good order the adjacent graveyard," in which repose the ashes of four or five godly generations. It is a church with a finished history! But as her sons and daughters, inheriting the sterling piety of their fathers, gather annually upon this hallowed ground to lovingly commemorate the historic past, they illustrate in their own persons, characters, and celebration, the blessed fact that the gracious influences set in motion by an earnest Christian church, continue even when, in the providence of God, it, as an organization, has become extinct.

         And the history of this venerable church, so briefly sketched by one of her loyal and loving sons, it seems to him, is but a providential comment upon those sweet words of Moses: "Know, therefore, that the Lord thy God, he is God, the faithful God, which keepeth covenant and mercy with them that love him and keep his commandments, to a thousand generations."(Deut. vii. 9.)

         In our next letter we shall attempt to draw from memory a picture of "Sacrament Sunday in old Midway church."

CHAPTER XI.
SACRAMENT SUNDAY AT OLD MIDWAY

         It was a great day with both white and black, and anticipated with joy by the pious, and interest by all. There was a peculiar quiet about the morning of the sacred day on the plantation. All the sounds of the busy week have ceased; the noisy rattle of the chain of the horse gin is silent., the

flails in the barnyard are still; few loud calls are heard about the quarters; the negroes are seen sitting on the sunny sides of their houses, mothers with their children's heads in their laps, carrying on in public an operation better suited for in-door privacy; no sounds are heard but the lowing of the cattle, the whinnying of the horses, the crowing of the cocks and cackling of the hens; the gobbling of the turkeys; the shrill cries of the geese; the winds appear to be asleep, and the very sunshine seems to fall more gently than during the week upon the widely extended fields and surrounding woods!

         Our honored father, a deacon of the church, sits by the window, and with a knife carefully sharpened the day before divides upon a clean white board the wheaten loaves into little cubes of bread, and the "elements," as they are called, together with the genuine silver goblets and silver tankards and silver baskets, previously polished by the deft hands of the house girl, with the little contribution boxes for the offering in aid of the poor, are all safely packed away in a wide basket.

         Prayers and breakfast over, the family dress for

church; and now the order is sent out to the stable boys and the carriage driver to "harness up;" and directly the high-pitched carriage, with its lofty driver's seat and swinging between its "C"springs, and the two-wheeled "top-gig" and the saddle horses are brought around to the front gate; and although it is scarcely more than nine o'clock, and the distance "a short mile," the entire family, as was the custom, ride to church. As we roll along the broad highway, we find the servants clean and neatly dressed and in their best, some on foot and others in Jersey wagons, crowded to their utmost capacity with little and big, and drawn by "Marsh Tackey's," equal in bottom and strength to, and no larger than, Texas ponies - all moving in the same direction; those on foot carrying their shoes and stockings in their hands, to be resumed after they shall have washed in the waters at the causeway near the church; for they believe in treading the Lord's courts with clean feet! Many are the kind greetings and mutual inquiries after the health of each other and of their families, exchanged by whites and blacks.

         We are among the first to arrive, but every

moment we hear the thunder of vehicles rolling across the half dozen bridges of the swamp causeway near at hand, and the neighing of horses; and here come the multitude, from distances of from one to ten miles and more. Horses are unharnessed and secured, and the worshipers fill the small houses surrounding the church, or stand in the sunshine, or saunter about the grounds, or visit the "graveyard."

         Under my father's superintendence, the long narrow red-painted tables and benches are brought out from the vestry and carried into the church, and arranged in the aisle before the pulpit. The church building, 40x60 feet in size, is very ancient; it was built in 1790; it is the successor of one destroyed by the British, and of a plainer and coarser put up after the Revolution. It is of wood, originally painted red, the old color showing beneath the later white, and is sumounted by a spire, with open belfry and a weather vane, which used to puzzle our child brains to ascertain what it was intended to represent. It has five entrances, two of which admit to the gallery. Passing in by the door, opening upon the graveyard, and near which was our

family pew, we look up a broad aisle to the pulpit, which, small and closely walled in, soars aloft toward the ceiling, and is surmounted by a sounding board, like a gigantic candle extinguisher, supported by an iron rod, the possible breaking of which often aroused our infantile speculations as to what, in that event, would become of the preacher! It was reached by a lofty stairway running up in front. At right angles to our aisle runs another as broad, connecting the two other doors. Aisles run around the sides of the audience room, and the pews are so arranged that everybody seems to be facing every body else! A wide gallery extends around three sides, resounding often with the creaking of new brogans, which the black wearers were not at all disposed to suppress. The communion table and benches reach the entire length of the broad aisle to the pulpit; the whole covered with the whitest and finest of linen (our mother's special care). A cloth of the same kind conceals from view at its head the sacred symbols of our Lord's atoning death. There is above a single row of sashed windows, out of reach, and transoms over the solid shutters of the windows below; but not a sign of a stove in the

church, although the air sometimes is frosty, and the shut up atmosphere occasionally of the temperature of the vaults in the cemetery hard by. And brides in the olden time, in mid-winter, came to these services clad in muslin, with only the protection of a shawl, and in paper-soled slippers, laced up the ankles. Why there never was any way of warming the church I never knew, nor heard explained. Doubtless some caught their death of the cold, which often made us children shiver and long for the benediction which would dismiss us to the sunny sides of the houses without or to their fires within. It was not, however, ordinarily bitterly cold for the winters were for the most part mild.

         All things having been prepared, there is a half-hour's prayer-meeting, attended by such worshipers as have arrived early.

         At eleven o'clock the regular communion service begins, with an invocation from one of the pastors; for we always had two. An earnest, well-written, often eloquent, always solemn, sermon is preached from a manuscript, either by the venerable Rev. Robert Quarterman, long since gone to his reward or his young and handsome coadjutor, Rev. I. S. K.

Axson, now living in Georgia, a feeble old man; * the long list of names of members received at a meeting of Session two weeks before, and "propounded" the Sunday preceding, is read again, and white and black candidates advance together, the last marshalled by the colored preacher, Toney Stevens, a slave. The candidates for baptism kneel and receive from the marble font, at which all, white and black, infant and adult, are baptized, the sacred sign of God's covenant love. The new members dismissed to their seats, one of the pastors gives out the hymn of institution (none other was ever sung), "'Twas on that dark, that doleful night;" during the singing of it the communicants fill the seats at the long tables and adjacent pews; the non-professors among the blacks have not been admitted to the galleries above, as there is not room. After the consecrating prayer, a tender address is made, and first the bread is distributed in the same silver baskets and at the same time, to all the communicants, white and black, below and above; another address, and the wine is passed around by the deacons, my venerated sire one of them. The

* Since deceased.

number of black communicants is so large, that Toney Stevens comes down from the gallery to replenish the gold-lined silver goblets from the basket of wine in bottles near the pulpit; and as the wine is poured out, its gurgling in the solemn silence smites distinctly upon our young ears, and the whole house is filled with the aroma of the pure imported Madeira. Communicants overlooked in the distribution of the "elements" are asked to signify the fact by raising the right hand; and if any have been passed by (which never occurred), they will be waited upon. We children, awed and almost frightened spectators, look on from our pews upon the solemnities, which suggest sad thoughts of a possible separation which the judgment may, like the communion table, make between us and our beloved parents!

         A prayer, doxology and benediction close the solemn and impressive service - solemn and impressive it seems to me upon the review, as nowhere else.

         We refresh ourselves in the hour's intermission from the abundant "cold snacks," we called them, or lunches; sun ourselves, and walk down the road or in the graveyard. Immediately at the close of

the communion service a great volume of musical sound, mellowed by the distance, comes up from the African church, in the edge of the forest, where godly Toney Stevens, the carpenter, is about to hold forth to his dusky charge. I have heard more artistic singing, but never heartier or more worshipful elsewhere.

         But the bell, whose iron tongue, to our young imaginations, was endowed literally with speech, is saying, "Come along! come along!" Another sermon is preached, and horses are found harnessed and vehicles ready, and the mighty congregation disperse to their several homes. The sun is low in the western horizon when we arrive at our plantation home and sit down to a late dinner. Sunday clothes are folded up and put away, and the easier fitting every-day garments and old shoes are, to our immense relief, once more put on. A Sunday-school for the young people of the plantation, conducted in a spare room of our house by one of my sisters, in which hymns are memorized and sung, and Dr. C. C. Jones' Catechism taught, closes the public religious services of the day. After supper and prayers, tired, we all retire to our early couches; but refreshed

by the rest, duties and worship of God's hallowed day, and ready on the morrow to take up with new courage and energy the tasks and burdens of secular life.

         Such is a picture of a "Sacrament Sunday in old Midway," as it comes back to me, like "memories of joys that are departed, pleasant but mournful to the soul."

         By such days of resting and of holy convocation were masters and servants, realizing even on earth the communion of saints, fitted for the same blessed home, in which multitudes of them have long since met, to keep an eternal celebration of t