pumkins in th' cookin' line;' and he led the way
to the farm-house.

As I turned to follow, I slipped a half-dollar into the hand of the
darky who was holding my horse, and asked him to put her again into the
stable.

'I'll do dat, sar; but I karn't take dis; massa doan't 'low it nohow,'
he replied, tendering me back the money.

'Barnes, your negroes have strange ways; I never met one before who'd
refuse money.'

'Wal, stranger,'tan't hosspetality to take money on yer friends, and
Bill gets all he wants from me.'

I took the silver and gave it to the first darky I met, who happened to
be an old centenarian belonging to the Colonel. As I tossed it to him,
he grinned out: 'Ah! massa, I'll git sum 'backer wid dis; 'pears like I
hadn't nary a chaw in furty yar.' With more than one leg in the grave,
the old negro had not lost his appetite for the weed: in fact, that and
whisky are the only 'luxuries' ever known to the plantation black.

As we went nearer, I took a closer survey of the farm-house. It was, as
I have said, a low, unpainted, wooden building, located in the middle of
a ten-acre lot. It was approached by a straight walk, paved with a
mixture of sand and tar, similar to that which the reader may have seen
in the Champs Elysees. I do not know whether my backwoods friend or the
Parisian pavior was the first inventor of this composition; but I am
satisfied the corn-cracker had not stolen it from the stone-cracker. The
walk was lined with fruit-bearing shrubs, and directly in front of the
house were two small flower-beds.

The dwelling itself, though of a dingy-brown wood-color, was neat and
inviting. It may have been forty feet square on the ground, and was only
a story and a half high; but a projecting roof and a front dormer-window
relieved it from the appearance of disproportion. Its gable ends were
surmounted by two enormous brick chimneys, carried up on the outside, in
the fashion of the South, and its high, broad windows were ornamented
with Venetian blinds. Its front door opened directly into the
'living-room,' and at the threshold we met its mistress. As the image of
that lady has still a warm place in a pleasant corner of my memory, I
will describe her. She was about thirty years of age, and had a fresh,
cheerful face. To say that she was handsome, would not be strictly true;
though she had that pleasant, gentle, kindly expression that sometimes
makes even a homely person seem beautiful. But she was