merits the title,--you cannot fail to observe all of these
little matters. They are the salient points of the picture.

You will observe, too, the house of the "overseer" standing apart; or,
as in the case of the plantation Besancon, at the end of the double row,
and fronting the main avenue. This, of course, is of a more pretentious
style of architecture; can boast of Venetian blinds to the windows, two
stories of height, and a "porch." It is enclosed with a paling to keep
off the intrusion of the children, but the dread of the painted cowhide
renders the paling almost superfluous.

As I approached the "quarter," I was struck with the peculiar character
of the picture it presented,--the overseer's house towering above the
humbler cabins, seeming to protect and watch over them, suggesting the
similarity of a hen with her brood of chickens.

Here and there the great purple swallows boldly cleft the air, or,
poised on wing by the entrance of their gourd-shell dwellings, uttered
their cheerful "tweet--tweet--tweet;" while the fragrant odour of the
China-trees and magnolias scented the atmosphere to a long distance
around.

When nearer still, I could distinguish the hum of human voices--of men,
women, and children--in that peculiar tone which characterises the voice
of the African. I fancied the little community as I had before seen
it--the men and women engaged in various occupations--some resting from
their labour, (for it was now after field hours,) seated in front of
their tent-like cabins, under the shade-tree, or standing in little
groups gaily chatting with each other--some by the door mending their
fishing-nets and tackle, by which they intended to capture the great
"cat" and "buffalo fish" of the bayous--some "chopping" firewood at the
common "wood-pile," which half-grown urchins were "toating," to the
cabins, so that "aunty" might prepare the evening-meal.

I was musing on the patriarchal character of such a picture,
half-inclined towards the "one-man power"--if not in the shape of a
slaveholder, yet something after the style of Rapp and his "social
economists."

"What a saving of state machinery," soliloquised I, "in this patriarchal
form! How charmingly simple! and yet how complete and efficient!"

Just so, but I had overlooked one thing, and that was the imperfectness
of human nature--the possibility--the probability--nay, the almost
certainty, that the _patriarch_ will pass into the _tyrant_.

H