distributed. It was not collected in groups, after the fashion with
which we are now familiar, for then there were no cities or towns
in Virginia. The only place which could pretend to either name was
Norfolk, the solitary seaport, which, with its six or seven thousand
inhabitants, formed the most glaring exception that any rule
solicitous of proof could possibly desire. Williamsburg, the capital,
was a straggling village, somewhat overweighted with the public
buildings and those of the college. It would light up into life and
vivacity during the season of politics and society, and then relapse
again into the country stillness. Outside of Williamsburg and Norfolk
there were various points which passed in the catalogue and on the map
for towns, but which in reality were merely the shadows of a name. The
most populous consisted of a few houses inhabited by storekeepers and
traders, some tobacco warehouses, and a tavern, clustered about the
church or court-house. Many others had only the church, or, if a
county seat, the church and court-house, keeping solitary state in the
woods. There once a week the sound of prayer and gossip, or at longer
intervals the voices of lawyers and politicians, and the shouts of the
wrestlers on the green, broke through the stillness which with the
going down of the sun resumed its sway in the forests.

There was little chance here for that friction of mind with mind, or
for that quick interchange of thought and sentiment and knowledge
which are familiar to the dwellers in cities, and which have driven
forward more rapidly than all else what we call civilization. Rare
meetings for special objects with persons as solitary in their lives
and as ill-informed as himself, constituted to the average Virginian
the world of society, and there was nothing from outside to supply the
deficiencies at home. Once a fortnight a mail crawled down from
the North, and once a month another crept on to the South. George