sively independent attitude on the part of the younger negroes; if I had the privilege of philosophizing in this article, I should characterize it as a reaction from the servility of slavery days. The cure for it, I think, is in more education, not less; and possibly in more respectful conduct toward their elders on the part of the white children whom the negro children emulate; for I have a faint impression that I have heard some talk about the forwardness and irreverence of our own children in these last days, as compared with the quiet respectfulness of our forebears and ourselves when they and we were young. And there is surely a grand movement further South away from the mere scholastic education which my Loudoun County friend deprecated, toward the industrial usefulness for which he thought the ordinary common schools were unfitting the negro.

As I went further South I was struck with the solidarity of view which seems to be developing on the part of the white people of all parties with regard to the negro. My abolitionist friends of Loudoun County could have shaken hands with my secessionist friends of Charlotte County as to the merits of the new Constitution. In Charlotte County I visited the home of a Southern gentleman of the old school. His plantation consisted of over a thousand acres, and his house was of the oldfashioned, roomy sort, with wide hall in the center, opening from a portico shaded by century-old oaks. He had helped to make history in his time, and had had an influential hand in the recent Constitutionmaking. He thanked Heaven that he had lived to see the day when the white man ruled again in his dear Virginia, though he had never expected to see such a consummation. Strangely enough, this was almost the identical expression of one of the abolitionist Quaker women whom I had just left in northern Virginia. She had thanked the Lord that the illiterate ex-slaves whom she had befriended all her life had been deprived of the suffrage. There was perhaps something of a woman's pique in her feeling on this matter.

She

said that she could never bear to go near the polls on election day, to see those ignorant negroes chuckling and grinning at the thought that they were making the laws of the land, while she, with her con

scious intelligence and good judgment, was debarred from any voice in matters which rested heavily on her conscience.

The old plantation was extremely interesting, with what was to me a somewhat pathetic interest. The house was nearly a century old, and I could not but people it with its bright, gay denizens of the old days. What happy scenes had its spacious rooms, its great hall, its wide lawn under the old oaks, beheld-what gay parties, entertained with hospitality how much more lavish, if not more open-hearted, than characterized it to-day-what gallant cavaliers and charming maidens had here plighted troth—and now-Ichabod! the glory has departed; though with the departing glory has gone, too, the unrighteous institution out of which it flowered. The old families have left or are leaving, the sons have gone into business in the cities, the daughters have perhaps won distinction in literature or pedagogy in the North, the old houses are being closed and falling into decay, the "Roanoke " which John Randolph was proud to associate with his name is no more, the land in some places is exhausted and some of it is actually being sold to the representatives of the despised race. The genial owner of this fine old place told me that at first he was bitterly opposed to selling land to negroes, but that he had changed his views on that point, and that he had divided up parts of his various plantations and sold them in small plots to negroes, who were generally "good pay" and very anxious to own a home. He took, on the whole, a rather hopeful view of the future of the negro, saying that many of them were very thrifty and industrious, and were steadily learning how to "get along." This broad-minded man was really a kind of Southern Puritan, and I cannot forbear telling a little war story to illustrate the unbending integrity of some of the men who fought for the South. During the last year of the war the Confederacy found it necessary to send trusted agents to Mexico to buy mules for the army. Each

man

was supplied with five thousand dollars in gold to make purchases. After Lee's surrender one of these agents reported to my friend, as his superior in the service, turning over his moneybelt with the $5,000 in it, still intact. This Southern Puritan, utterly ruined by

the war as he was, took that $5,000 to Richmond and surrendered it to the United States Government, regarding it as captured property, and as such not being available even for the succor of the penniless widows and orphans by whom he was surrounded, to say nothing of keeping it himself. Asked if he would not put in a claim for expenses in connection with the surrender of the money, he replied, "No, sir; I was obliged to come to Richmond on private business, and you owe me nothing." Can we be too generous in our thought of such men?

Going over to see an old "mammy" in the "quarters"-what there was left of them-I came upon an evidence of the up-to-dateness of Virginian farming. While tobacco is the chief money crop of this section, a good deal of wheat is raised, and it was being threshed by a steam thresher, with a white man for engineer and negroes for harvest hands.

Arrived

at the old cabin, I was introduced to "Aunt Beth" and "Aunt Jane," and had the pleasure of hearing the genuinely affectionate conversation that always takes place between an old slave mammy and a representative of "her white folks." This old mammy," Aunt Beth," had gone blind with cataract, and she was cared for by "Aunt Jane," with assistance from "de bes' white folks in de lan'." The young lady who accompanied me brought out the story of the blindness. "And did you ever try to have your sight restored, Aunt Beth?" "Yes'm, yes'm, I went to Richmond and saw de doctor, and he was goin' to cure me; but on de mornin' when I was to go to see him again, I heard dat he was goin' to take my eyes out o' ma haid, and so I done stole away and came home; for, bless de Lord, I'se goin' to take my eyes wid me w'en I goes to heben." The picture shows Aunt Beth clasping a bottle of home-made wine which her friend from the great house had brought to her for her stomach's sake. Charlotte is a prohibition county, and the negroes cannot buy stimulants; hence Aunt Beth was very grateful for the benefaction. The cabin was small but very clean. The cooking was done outside, as a fire within doors would have made the one room oppressively hot.

No one visits Virginia without seeing the Natural Bridge. Anything that has

two stars prefixed to it in Baedeker is worth seeing, and one is well satisfied to spend time and money to get to the Bridge. But what a time Washington must have had in reaching it, in those old days before the railroads! Nevertheless, he may have reached his destination on horseback with less delay than one finds almost inevitable now on Southern railroads. No, that is unfair: it is only the through trains that are always late in Virginia; the local trains are usually on time. But Washington's hand, I have discovered, had lost its cunning in the interval between the cherry-tree-cutting at the old homestead and the name-cutting on the Natural Bridge. He cut the tree down so thoroughly that it has never grown up again, to my knowledge, to be labeled "Washington's Cherry-tree;" but he did not cut his name on the Natural Bridge so that it can to-day be discovered by the naked eye. But probably the Father of his Country would not bemoan the fact that his name has disappeared from the high place where he carved it; in later life he must have regarded this exploit as of a piece with the cherry-tree episode, if he ever heard of that. I had supposed that with this illustrious example before them "the Southerners" had embellished their beautiful bridge with scrawls and initials and dates, not to say advertisements of elixirs and nostrums, after the fashion of some Northern places of pilgrimage. But no; the Bridge is almost absolutely free from defacement; and the names of the old-time worthies, if there are any written on the rock walls, must be found with the aid of a guide and a glass. This fact speaks volumes for the good taste of the South. It is a goodly sight, that bridge-and a challenge to the camerist. I found difficulty in getting a position that would include the entire bridge in the picture with satisfactory results. Some of my friends said I couldn't; the reader may judge.

Besides its wealth of river and forest, upland and lowland scenery, its beautiful valleys and its wonderful caves, its traditional hospitalities and its reminiscential veterans, Virginia awakens the traveler's interest in many places by a thoroughly modern spirit. One doesn't like to see too much of this spirit on one's travels in search of the picturesque-except in the matter of hotels, perhaps—but it exists

and helps to enlighten one. For instance, I came across a " "boom town in western Virginia. True, the boom had collapsed, but while it lasted a Western mining camp could not have been worse hit by the fever of speculation. The hotel, indeed, which was closed, was a fine example. It was built at a cost of $125,000, I was told, and on the day of my visit it was sold to a benevolent order, which wanted it for a home for its aged members, for $12,100! I don't know what Bedford was like when the boom was on, but the day I was there

it was a quiet, restful place, beautifully situated among the hills, with the fine Peaks of Otter for a background, and seemed a good place for the aged or any one else to live in. Why such delightful villages should ever want to take on the name or characteristics of a "city" is a mystery that I cannot solve on this trip. But Virginians point with pride to some of these still booming towns as an evidence that the Old Dominion is not by any means in a decadent state. And it is not the only evidence.