and
women, in couples or small parties, neatly and becomingly dressed, are
seen moving along the chief thoroughfare on their way to call on their
friends. The women are decked in gay calicoes, often further adorned
with bunches of wild flowers plucked by the road-side; while the men are
clothed in suits which they have bought at the "store," and they
frequently wear cheap jewelry which they have purchased at the same
establishment. The dandies in the younger set flourish canes and assume
all the languishing airs that distinguish the callow fops of the white
race. Many visitors are received at the most popular houses, and they
are observed sitting with the families of their hosts and hostesses
under the shade of the trees until a late hour of the afternoon. Some
pass from cabin to cabin, not stopping long at any one, but finding a
cordial welcome everywhere. Some linger very late, and make their way
back by the light of the moon. As they move along the low-ground road
their voices can be heard very distinctly from the hills above as they
talk and laugh together; and sometimes they vary the monotony of their
walk by singing a hymn, the sound of which is borne very far on the
bosom of the silence, and is sweet and soft in its cadence, mellowed as
it is by the distance and idealized by the nocturnal hour.

There are two church-edifices on the plantation, one of which is used
during the week as a public school, but the other was built expressly
for religious worship. Both are plain but comfortable structures, the
outer and inner walls of which have been whitewashed and the blinds
painted a dark green. Around them are wide yards, carefully swept;
otherwise their neighborhoods are rather forbidding, on account of the
silence and darkness of the forests in which they are situated, the only
proof of their connection with the world at large being the roads which
run by their doors. The pulpit of one is filled by a white preacher of
Northern birth and education, who removed to this section after the war;
and the only objection that can be urged against him is that he often
holds religious revivals at the time when the tobacco-worm is most
active in ravaging the ripening plant. The negroes who have to walk
several miles after their work is over to get to his church are kept up
till a late hour of night and in a state of high excitement, and are so
overcome with fatigue the following day that they dawdle over their
tasks. These revi