ittle mule. He'll haul a load for ye! He'll
stick to the ground go'n' up hill jest like a dry-land tarrapin! But I
take the mare when I'm in a hurry; she makes them feet rattle ag'in' the
ground!"

We took the plank road to Chancellorsville, passing through a waste
country of weeds or undergrowth, like every other part of Virginia which
I had yet seen.

"All this region through yer," said Elijah, "used to be grow'd up to
corn and as beautiful clover as ever you see. But since the wa', it's
all turned out to bushes and briers and hog-weeds. It's gittin' a start
ag'in now. I'll show 'em how to do it. If we git in a crap o' wheat this
fall, which I don't know if we sha'n't, we kin start three big teams,
and whirl up twenty acres of land directly. That mule," etc.

Elijah praised the small farmers.

"People in ordinary sarcumstances along yer are a mighty industrious
people. It's the rich that keep this country down. The way it generally
is, a few own too much and the rest own noth'n'. I know hundreds of
thousands of acres of land put to no uset, which, if it was cut up into
little farms, would make the country look thrifty. This is mighty good
land; clay bottom; holds manure jest like a chany bowl does water. But
the rich ones jest scratched over a little on 't with their slave labor,
and let the rest go. They wouldn't sell: let a young man go to 'em to
buy, and they'd say they didn't want no poo' whites around 'em; they
wouldn't have one, if they could keep shet of 'em. And what was the
result? Young men would go off to the west, if they was enterpris'n',
and leave them that wa'n't enterpris'n' hyer to home. Then as the old
heads died off, the farms would run down. The young women would marry
the lazy young men, and raise up families of lazy children."

The country all about Fredericksburg was very unhealthy. Elijah, on
making inquiries, could hear of scarcely a family on the road exempt
from sickness.

"It was never so till since the wa'. Now we have chills and fever, jest
like they do in a new country. It's owin' to the land all comin' up to
weeds; the dew settles in 'em, and they rot, and that fills the air with
the agur. I've had the agur myself till about a fortnight ago; then,
soon as I got shet of that, the colic took me. Eat too much on a big
appetite, I suppose. I like to live well; like to see plenty of
everything on the table, and then I like to see every man eat a heap."

I commended Elijah's practical