and orange grow side by side. On these trees
the wild grape-vine, laden with fruit, hangs
in fibrous festoons thick and strong as cables.
Or, strolling on the banks of the river, you may
hear the raftmen blowing their signal horns;
or you may wander by the negro cabins, each
with its garden and dovecot, for the negro is
allowed to sell his master vegetables, fruit, and
poultry. But often my own taste led me to the
wild swamps round Turtle Cove, or to some of
the more retired inlets and bayous. Here, stepping
cautiously, for fear of snakes or alligators,
you stride over some fallen tree that bridges
the water, and pierce through avenues of ghostly
cypresses, from which the moss hangs down in
hoary drifts, like shreds of funeral banners in
a chancel vault. Everywhere, is a sense of
desolation, terror, despair, and death.

But let me tell one of my Southern dreams,
after a week's roaming in South Carolina.

I am at a planter's house towards sunset,
and I pass by the negro quarters, on my way to
see a negro wedding— Mr. Sambo Smith and
Miss Clara Brown. Everywhere I hear the
banjo and the "Yah, yah!" of the dancers.
Tired of the noise and tumult of boisterous happy
fun, I wander on towards a cypress swamp. I
pass into the wood— a blaze of tropical colour,
with autumn leaves, that now echo with the
voices of the mocking-bird, most versatile of
fioriturist singers. I leap into a dry rut, and
push through the arching cypress roots deeper
into the swamp. Suddenly it gets darker and
deeper. The owl hoots above me, for here
it is perpetual twilight. The snake hisses, the
bull-frog groans like a half-lost spirit. No birds
sing in this poisonous den of death. The foliage
seems to drip baneful dews; the earth is dank
wet; as those wild-ducks fluster up along the
lagoon, a huge sleeping alligator rouses from
the sedgy grass; and as "the skeleton crane"
flies off shrieking, the steel-backed monster
slides back into the green ooze that slowly
absorbs him. Yonder he goes, steering slowly
with his ridgy back, and now only his long head
shows above the stream.

Heaven above us! Is that fire that bars the
sky between the dark cypress-trees— broad
widening veins of blood-colour like so many
avenging angels' swords? No. That is the
great conflagration of sunset commencing,
rehearsal of the Last Day, beautiful yet
terrible!

It is not the fire of burning towns yet: the
region of the South still slumbers in peace.
Yet who shall say for how long?

Do not let me forget that, though violent and
impetuous as when they once before revolted
from the union and were "whipped back,"
even northern American writers love to
extenuate the faults of the Carolina people, and
allow them to be to use their own words—
remarkable for "an ease, a grace, a generosity,
and largeness of character, incompatible with
the daily routine of the petty occupations and
straggles of modern commercial life."
Further, that the Carolina planters are men of an
old stock, accustomed to live in the country
alone, uncontrolled, and habituated for generations
to the institution of slavery.

MR. SINGLEMAN ON TEA.

LET there be no misunderstanding. Here is
to be no scandal about Queen Howqua, no
cowardly vilification of the tender wiry-leafed
Pekoe, not a word against the exquisite essence
and elegant extract, no cowardly stabbing in
the dark! The man who could unhandsomely
take advantage of the present sour temperament
of the public mind towards the Celestials,
inflamed as it is by war and loot and taels and
rich indemnities, and turn this popular fury to
the disparagement of an innocent and harmless
beverage, is fit for those hackneyed treasons,
stratagems, and spoils. For him may some sly
nymph covertly moisten a third, nay, a fourth
time, exhausted grounds, and fill him forth a
pale solution with a winning smile! Blasphemy
against Bohea, soothing cheerer and no inebriator?
No, not for worlds!

I must be permitted to set myself rectus in
curiâ and above suspicion. Let me fortify
myself in advance by loud praises and vehement
protests of admiration. For it will come to pass
that later in this paper I shall have to say what
savours of hostility to the delectable beverage,
more, indeed, in the manner of mild remonstrance
— in sorrow rather than in anger— as one
might chide a well-beloved but wayward child.

Alas! I am as a preacher who loveth his own
sin. Confidentially and by way of confession, I
own to a tenderness amounting almost to the
illicit for this seductive extract. For the
alcoholic sisterhood, your "spirits," whiskies,
brandies, gins— above all, for the hot miscellany
produced by intermarriage or admixture of hot
waters with those distilled ethers— I have no
manner of toleration. I fancy those stimulants
only with a qualification: exceptionally that is,
as a familiar whom I should be glad to see drop
in now and then. But, for that softer maiden,
so fair, so equable in temperament, so constant
and habitual, yet never cloying, who waits on
us neat-handed every morning and every evening
from the cradle to the grave, I have not
words to glorify her decent virtues. And yet I
love my love with a qualification, and shall
protest against her anon.

Tea is of Arcadia tea, and has an innocent
pastoral flavour. I suspect it was popular in
the Garden of Eden before the Fall. The
stronger drinks have all the glare and guilt, the
educated villany of the cities. Only consider
her of the mornings, when the world is stretching
itself wearily, and putting off its sleep; Mr.
Singleman's boots and slippers lie in symmetrical
rank and file; Mr. Singleman's garments,
upper and nether, repose speckless in a neat
bale upon contiguous chair; Mr. Singleman
himself, struggling desperately with a dripping
sponge, is as an antique statue or athlete rising
from his tin tray, and cannot be too much
saturated with the refreshing fluid. But while he