gathered around the
door-ways of the rural meeting-houses of New-England.

One of them, who was leaning against a tree, quietly lighting a pipe,
was a fair type of the whole, and as he took a part in the scene which
followed, I will describe him. He was tall and spare, with a swinging,
awkward gait, and a wiry, athletic frame. His hair, which he wore almost
as long as a woman's, was coarse and black, and his face strongly
marked, and of the precise color of two small rivulets of tobacco-juice
that escaped from the corners of his mouth. He had an easy,
self-possessed manner, and a careless, devil-may-care way about him,
that showed he had measured his powers, and was accustomed to 'rough it'
with the world. He wore a broadcloth coat of the fashion of some years
ago, but his waistcoat and nether garments of the common, reddish
homespun, were loose and ill-shaped, as if their owner did not waste
thought on such trifles. His hat, as shockingly bad as Horace Greeley's,
had the inevitable broad brim, and fell over his face like a
calash-awning over a shop-window. As I approached him he extended his
hand with a pleasant 'How are ye, stranger?.'

'Very well,' I replied, returning his grasp with equal warmth, 'how are
you?'

'Right smart, right smart, thank ye. You're--' the rest of the
sentence was cut short by a gleeful exclamation from Jim, who, mounted
on the box of the carriage, which was drawn up on the cleared plot in
front of the meeting-house, waved an open newspaper over his head, and
called out, as he caught sight of the Colonel:

'Great news, massa, great news from Charls'on!'

(The darky, while we were in church, had gone to the post-office, some
four miles away, and got the Colonel's mail, consisting of letters from
his New-York and Charleston factors, the Charleston _Courier_ and
_Mercury_ and the New-York _Journal of Commerce_. The latter sheet, at
the date of which I am writing, was in wide circulation at the South,
its piety (!) and its politics being then calculated with mathematical
precision for secession latitudes.)

'What is it, Jim?' shouted his master. 'Give it to us.'

The darky had somehow learned to read, but holding the paper at arm's
length, and throwing himself into a theatrical attitude, he belched out,
with any amount of gesticulation, the following:

'De news am, massa, and gemmen and ladies, dat de ole fort fore
Charls'on hab hen devacuated by Major Andersin and de sogers, and dat
dey