age and shade of color. All of the older set, with few exceptions, were
the slaves of their employer, and did not leave him even in the restless
and excited hour of their emancipation. Born on the place, they have
spent the whole of their long lives there, and consider it to be as much
their home as it is that of its owner. In fact, the negroes here are
remote from those influences that lead so many others to migrate. The
plantation is eighteen miles from a railroad and forty from a town, and
is set down in a very sparsely settled country that has been only
partially cleared of its forests. It has a teeming population of its
own, which satisfies the social instincts of its inhabitants as much as
if they were collected together in a small town. In consequence of all
these facts, and in spite of the new state of things which the war
produced, there survives in its confines something of that baronial
spirit which we observe on a landed estate in England at the present
day, where every man, woman, and child is accustomed to think of the
landlord as the fountain-head of power and benefits. A similar spirit of
loyal subordination prevails particularly among the oldest inhabitants
of the plantation, who were once the absolute chattels of its owner, and
who look upon that fact as creating an obligation in him to support them
in their decrepitude. Being too far in the sere and yellow leaf to work,
they are provided every month with enough rations to meet their wants,
and in total idleness they calmly await the inevitable hour when their
bones will be laid beside those of their fathers. There are few more
picturesque figures than are many of these old negroes, who passed the
heyday of their strength before they were freed, and who, born in
slavery, survived to a new era only to find themselves in the last
stages of old age. They are regarded by their race with as much
veneration as if they were invested with the authority of prophets and
seers. Some of them, in spite of their years, act occasionally as
preachers, and are listened to with awe and trepidation as they lift up