ill-educated Southerner, who is too high-mighty
to condescend to ask the time of day if he
wished to know it, knows by heart the
public and private life of every public man
of his country: all the phases and shiftings
of present or past parties, the arguments and
decisions pro and con of all the questions
that have agitated it, and the state of its
relations to everybody and everything.
At first I am interested by the violent
contrast of his ideas to those I am accustomed
to hear; but I don't care much about
these things. I grow sleepy, and am shown
to bed.

On awakening in the morning, I find
there had been placed at my bedside:

First, A small table;

Second, Placed thereon, a tumbler and
spoon;

Third, A bowl of sugar;

Fourth, A pitcher of iced water;

Fifth, A plateful of bright green,
strong-smelling mint-leaves;

Sixth, A decanter of brandy!

Is it proper for the maintenance of the
Institution in Virginia, that a mint-julep
should be taken before rising? Is this the
regular morning pabulum which has enabled
Ole Virginny to perform that feat denied to
all the rest of mortality never to tire?
or is this the way Ole Virginny refreshes before
tiring? I am doomed to be considered a
spooney during the extra day remaining for
my stay here. I know it: the girl who
clears my room; the boy, sixty years old,
who fetches up my water and brushes my
clothes, will report on my worthlessness.
I have disrespected a household god, and
summary indignation awaits me. I feel that the
eyes— not only of the household in which I
am staying, but that of the entire population
of Jemima, among whom my imbecility will
soon become known— will look upon me with
scorn and contempt as a puny weakling, who
couldn't take his julep before breakfast—
a light-headed, poor-stomached, degenerate
spawn of the Free Institutions.

Feeling, of course, the ignominy which
ought reasonably to attach itself to any one
guilty of so grave an offence, I refrain from
giving any one a chance for open derision at
the breakfast-table, by preserving a discreet
silence. I am there told that it is court-day
at Jemima to-day, and I must be there to
transact my affairs. I am to ride. A boy,
who is grey-headed and a grandfather, brings
my steed to the door; two more boys hold
on to the bridle while the nag switches
off the flies with his tail; and three
more boys assist him in switching them
off with fern branches. While engaged in
this laborious toil, one of them— although it is
only seven o'clock A.M.,— falls asleep against
the side of the horse, snoring, with his great
bullet head shining in the sun like a
perspiring black pudding, till some one arouses
him by sticking grass into his nose. The
horse is a fine animal. Nearly all Virginia
horses are, albeit bred too fine for English
tastes, and now getting poor by too much
inter-breeding;— but the equipments! They
don't believe in the saying "that there's
nothing like leather" in Virginia. It is
evident that they think string a great deal
like leather. There is more rope used in
my accoutrements than if I had been
Mazeppa, and was to be bound on. The buckle
is broken off the belly-band, and that is
tied with string; the cheek-strap is another
piece of string; so also is the left-hand
bridle. There is no stirrup on one side, and
more string is used to hitch up the other.
But the roads are very bad at that time of
the year, they say; so I would have to walk
my horse, anyhow, so it makes no difference.
The Court-House is three miles distant.
A boy is given to me to show me the road
through the scrub, and take care of my
charger; and I start, all the darkies on the
farm following me to the gate. The road
at first runs through a small forest of
stunted shrubs, and then debouches into a
rolling country of bare bleak hills, with a
soft red clayey soil. It is supposed to be
enclosed on each side with what is called a
worm or V fence, which has a battered, haggard
and dissipated look. Half the rails are
down, some with one end sticking in the
fence, the other upright, prodding the air;
others lying about loose, giving a most
dilapidated air to a landscape not of itself
attractive. Presently we come to a spot
where late rains have moistened the clay
into an oozy ointment, which the rays of the
sun have encrusted with a hard, pie-crusty
looking cover. After I have passed this spot
a few rods, my antiquated boy of course
lagging far behind me, I hear "Massa!
Massa!" I turn in my saddle. "Yah,
yah! lis um keep right on. Dah's um,"
and my youth drops as if struck with
epilepsy, plump into the middle of the red
pastry slush. Alarmed, fearing a sun-stroke,
I ride hastily back. What a picture!
He has chosen this spot of soft mud for his
noon-day nap, and there he lies, sound
asleep in a moment— a huge piece of jet set
in cornelian— the great glaring sun streaming
down on him, and a myriad of small
yellow butterflies and bluebottles settled on
his body. I shout and crack my whip in
vain. He is probably away off in the midst
of a corn-husking or a break-down, and why
should I disturb him?

I don't, but ride on. And, if somebody
hasn't accidentally found him, (for I know
that his master won't miss him, or if he did,
it would be too much trouble to hunt for
him), and has had the energy and power of
will, which I very much doubt, to kick him
up, I should not be surprised to hear of his
sleeping there to this day.

I have arrived at Jemima Court-House,
and my first impression is, that Jemima