is a vague and perhaps unattractive
term to an American until he knows, in books or in flesh and blood, a
few Britons of the right stamp. And so South and North need mutual
interpretation not alone through their historic heroes, but through the
best of their everyday people. And of those best, surely Thomas Dabney
was one,--a strong, tender, noble man, fulfilling each relation in
family and society with loyal conscience and sympathetic heart.

From the book we can give but a few instances of plantation life as such
a man made it. When he was to move from Virginia to Mississippi he
called together all his slaves,--some hundreds--and told them he wanted
to take none of them against their will, and especially he would not
break up any families. If any of them had wives or husbands on other
plantations, he would sell or buy, just as they wished, so that every
family should stay or go together. Every one of them elected to go with
their old master. Settled in Mississippi, his cotton plantation became
the admiration and envy of the neighbors, for the size of the crops as
well as the condition of the workers. Their comfort was amply secured.
The general rule was three hours' rest at midday and a Saturday
half-holiday. At the height of the season hours were longer, but there
was a system of prizes, for four or five months in the year, from $1 a
week to a picayune; with an extra prize of a $5 gold piece for anyone
picking 600 pounds a day; and these prizes roused such interest and
excitement that some of the ambitious ones had to be compelled to leave
the field at night, wishing to sleep at the end of their row. The
inefficient were gently tolerated; severe punishment was held to be
alike cruel and useless; an incompetent servant was carried as a burden
from which there was no escape. Such endurance was the way of all good
masters and mistresses at the South,--"and I have known very few who
were not good," adds the writer. The plantation trained and kept its own
mechanics; two each of carpenters, blacksmiths, millers, with five
seamstresses in the house. In the house, under the mistress's eye, were
cut and made the clothes of all the negroes, two woolen and two cotton
suits a year, with a gay calico Sunday dress for each woman. The women
were taught sewing in the house. When their babies were born a nurse was
provided, and all the mother's work done for her for a month, and for a
year she was allowed ample leisure for the care of