e. She talked freely about the want of
decency and morality in the young colored folks of the present day. It
was n't so when she was a girl. Long, long time ago, she and her husband
had been sold at sheriff's sale and separated, and she never had another
husband. Not that she blamed her master so much he could n't help it;
he got in debt. And she expounded her philosophy about the rich, and the
danger they are in. The great trouble is that when a person is rich, he
can borrow money so easy, and he keeps drawin' it out of the bank and
pilin' up the debt, like rails on top of one another, till it needs a
ladder to get on to the pile, and then it all comes down in a heap, and
the man has to begin on the bottom rail again. If she'd to live her life
over again, she'd lay up money; never cared much about it till now. The
thrifty, shrewd old woman still walked about a good deal, and kept her
eye on the neighborhood. Going out that morning she had seen some fence
up the road that needed mending, and she told Mr. Devault that she
didn't like such shiftlessness; she didn't know as white folks was much
better than colored folks. Slavery? Yes, slavery was pretty bad--she had
seen five hundred niggers in handcuffs, all together in a field, sold to
be sent South.

About six miles from here is a beech grove of historical interest, worth
a visit if we could have spared the time. In it is the large beech (six
and a half feet around six feet from the ground) on which Daniel Boone
shot a bear, when he was a rover in this region. He himself cut
an inscription on the tree recording his prowess, and it is still
distinctly legible:

D. BOONE CILT A BAR ON THIS TREE, 1760.

This tree is a place of pilgrimage, and names of people from all parts
of the country are cut on it, until there is scarcely room for any more
records of such devotion. The grove is ancient looking, the trees are
gnarled and moss-grown. Hundreds of people go there, and the trees are
carved all over with their immortal names.

A pleasant ride over a rich rolling country, with an occasional strip of
forest, brought us to Union in the evening, with no other adventure than
the meeting of a steam threshing-machine in the road, with steam
up, clattering along. The devil himself could not invent any machine
calculated to act on the nerves of a horse like this. Jack took one look
and then dashed into the woods, scraping off his rider's hat but did not
succeed in getting rid