d bounds through every vein as if thrilled by electricity, and a
man of lively temperament can scarcely restrain his legs from dancing a
breakdown. Night found us thirty miles on our way, and under the roof of
a hospitable planter. A storm came on with the going down of the sun,
and lasted during the following day; but, desiring to arrive at my
destination before the servant should set out to meet me, I decided to
push on in the rain.

Our second day's travel was attended with sundry interruptions and
adventures, and night overtook us in the midst of a forest, uncertain
where we were, and half dead from exposure to the storm; but after
several hours of hard riding, we found ourselves, drenched to the skin
and benumbed with the cold, before the door of a one-story log cabin,
tenanted by a family of

POOR WHITES.

The rain was falling in torrents, and the night was as 'dark as the
darkest corner of the dark place below.' We were in the midst of what
seemed an endless forest of turpentine pines, and had seen no human
habitation for hours. Not knowing where the road might lead us, and
feeling totally unable to proceed, we determined to ask shelter at the
shanty for the night.

In answer to our summons a wretched-looking, half-clad, dirt-bedraggled
woman thrust her head from the door-way, with the inquiry, 'Who are ye?'

'We'm only massa and me, and de hoss, and we'm half dead wid de cold,'
said Scipio; 'can't we cum in out ob de rain?'

'Wal, strangers,' replied the woman, eying us as closely as the darkness
would permit, 'you'll find mighty poor fixins har, but I reckon ye can
come in.'

Entering the house, we saw, by the light of a blazing pile of pine
knots, which roared and crackled on the hearth, that it contained only a
single apartment, about twenty feet square. In front of the fire-place,
which occupied the better half of one side of the room, the floor was of
the bare earth, littered over with pine chips, dead cinders, live coals,
broken pots, and a lazy spaniel dog. Opposite to this, at the other end
of the room, were two low beds, which looked as if they had been 'slept
in forever, and never made up.' Against the wall, between the beds and
the fire-place, stood a small pine table, and on it was a large wooden
bowl, from whose mouth protruded the handles of several unwashed pewter
spoons. On the right of the fire was a razeed rocking-chair, evidently
the peculiar property of the mistress of the mansion,