The luxury was imperfect. The splendor was sometimes barbaric. There
were holes in the brocades, and the fresh air of heaven would often
blow through a broken window upon the glittering silver and the costly
china. It was an easy-going aristocracy, unfinished, and frequently
slovenly in its appointments, after the fashion of the warmer climates
and the regions of slavery.

Everything was plentiful except ready money. In this rich and poor
were alike. They were all ahead of their income, and it seems as if,
from one cause or another, from extravagance or improvidence, from
horses or the gaming-table, every Virginian family went through
bankruptcy about once in a generation.

When Harry Warrington arrived in England, all his relations at
Castlewood regarded the handsome young fellow as a prince, with his
acres and his slaves. It was a natural and pleasing delusion, born of
the possession of land and serfs, to which the Virginians themselves
gave ready credence. They forgot that the land was so plentiful that
it was of little value; that slaves were the most wasteful form of
labor; and that a failure of the tobacco crop, pledged before it was
gathered, meant ruin, although they had been reminded more than once
of this last impressive fact. They knew that they had plenty to eat
and drink, and a herd of people to wait upon them and cultivate their
land, as well as obliging London merchants always ready to furnish
every luxury in return for the mortgage of a crop or an estate. So
they gave themselves little anxiety as to the future and lived in the
present, very much to their own satisfaction.

To the communities of trade and commerce, to the mercantile and
industrial spirit of to-day, such an existence and such modes of life