she recognized them; she was the queen
of a vast estate, on which many souls looked to her for comfort and
help, and, as a rule, she responded to their call with all alacrity. To
her slaves, at least as far as the house servants were concerned, she
was friend rather than mistress, acknowledging them as part of her
family and caring for them almost as for her own children. But the
trouble was that she generally did these things vicariously; she
delegated her powers, seeing to it, indeed, that they were administered
as she would have them, but herself doing little. She was given over,
for her own part, to the demands of society and to the requirements of
hospitality; and Southern hospitality is proverbial, and the courtly
welcome and gracious attentions of the hostess of the plantation mansion
in the ante-bellum days were among the most agreeable and vivid
impressions of her guests. Nor with all the social distinction of the
southern household was there a sacrifice of a single charm of home life.
Every important domestic event was attended with becoming ceremony. The
arrival of the newborn, the home gatherings of later years, and the
wedding,--these were occasions to be celebrated by all; occasions when
the tenderest family sentiment was manifested. At such times, it may be
remarked, the system of domestic slavery appealed rather as a virtue
than as a stain, for the household slaves were interested sharers in the
joys of the family. In this connection, one is reminded of the Georgia
negress who, on being asked if she were the slave of a certain person,
replied: "Yes, I belong to them, and they belong to me."

In her home the typical Virginia lady did little with her own hands; she
directed, but she would have thought it shame to labor even in such a
cause. Her hands were too delicate to work, her feet too dainty to press
the ground; she never walked where she could ride, and carriages were
always at her command. Her winters, if she lived on her plantation, were
passed in a round of pleasures, of balls and minor social functions; her
summers she spent at the famous "Springs," whither she drove in her
cumbrous but comfortable carriage,--in which way, indeed, some of the
more enthusiastic lovers of those "Springs" came even from the
southernmost bournes of the land. A friend of the writer, for instance,
once told him how she had often travelled in this manner from New
Orleans to the Greenbrier White Sulphur Springs in those