and other
papers. His writings are marked by ease and freshness, The following
extract is from "Swallow Barn," a series of sketches of early Virginia.
###

From the house at Swallow Barn there is to be seen, at no great distance,
a clump of trees, and in the midst of these a humble building is
discernible, that seems to court the shade in which it is modestly
embowered. It is an old structure built of logs. Its figure is a cube,
with a roof rising from all sides to a point, and surmounted by a wooden
weathercock, which somewhat resembles a fish and somewhat a fowl.

This little edifice is a rustic shrine devoted to Cadmus, and is under the
dominion of parson Chub. He is a plump, rosy old gentleman, rather short
and thickset, with the blood vessels meandering over his face like
rivulets,--a pair of prominent blue eyes, and a head of silky hair not
unlike the covering of a white spaniel. He may be said to be a man of
jolly dimensions, with an evident taste for good living, sometimes sloven
in his attire, for his coat--which is not of the newest--is decorated with
sundry spots that are scattered over it in constellations. Besides this,
he wears an immense cravat, which, as it is wreathed around his short
neck, forms a bowl beneath his chin, and--as Ned says--gives the parson's
head the appearance of that of John the Baptist upon a charger, as it is
sometimes represented in the children's picture books. His beard is
grizzled with silver stubble, which the parson reaps about twice a
week--if the weather be fair.

Mr. Chub is a philosopher after the order of Socrates. He was an emigrant
from the Emerald Isle, where he suffered much tribulation in the
disturbances, as they are mildly called, of his much-enduring country. But
the old gentleman has weathered the storm without losing a jot of that
broad, healthy benevolence with which Nature has enveloped his heart, and
whose ensign she has hoisted in his face. The early part of his life had
been easy and prosperous, until the rebellion of 1798 stimulated his
republicanism into a fever, and drove the full-blooded hero headlong into
a quarrel, and put him, in spite of his peaceful profession, to standing
by his pike in behalf of his principles. By this unhappy boiling over of
the caldron of his valor, he fell under the ban of the ministers, and
tested his share of government mercy. His house was burnt over his head,
his horses and hounds (for, by all accounts, he was a perfect