'You are not the first coward who has taken shelter beneath my gray
hairs.'

"The same Judge Smith, when a proposition came before the Senate to
build a State penitentiary, said, 'Wall in the city of Mobile; you will
have your penitentiary and its inmates.'

"So far I have found it easier to travel without an escort South and
West than at the North; that is, I have more care taken of me. Every one
is courteous, too, in speech. I know that they cannot love
Massachusetts, but they are careful not to wound my feelings. They
acknowledge it to be the great State in education; they point to a
pretty village and say, 'Almost as neat as a New England village.'

"Savannah, April 15.... To-day we left town at ten o'clock for a drive
in any direction that we liked. Mr. F. and I went in a buggy, and Miss
S. cantered behind us on her horse.

"The road that we took led to some rice plantations ten miles out of the
city. Our path was ornamented by the live-oaks, cedar trees, the
dogwood, and occasionally the mistletoe, and enlivened sometimes by the
whistle of the mocking-bird. Down low by the wheels grew the wild azalea
and the jessamine. Above our heads the Spanish moss hung from the trees
in beautiful drapery.

"By mistake we drove into the plantation grounds of Mr. Gibbons, a man
of wealth, who is seldom on his lands, and where the avenues are
therefore a little wild, and the roads a little rough.

"We came afterwards upon a road leading under the most magnificent oaks