away from city folks, with their stuck-up manners and
queer ways, a-fault-finding when you stick your knife in your mouth in
place of your fork, and a-feeding you on _China_ tea in place of dear
old yaupon. Charles, you can't reckon how I longs to get a cup of good
yaupon."

As the reader is about entering a country where the laboring classes
draw largely upon nature for their supply of "the cup that cheers but
not inebriates," I will describe the shrub which produces it.

This substitute for the tea of China is a holly (_ilex_), and is called
by the natives "yaupon" (_I. cassine, Linn._). It is a handsome shrub,
growing a few feet in height, with alternate, perennial, shining leaves,
and bearing small scarlet berries. It is found in the vicinity of salt
water, in the light soils of Virginia and the Carolinas. The leaves and
twigs are dried by the women, and when ready for market are sold at one
dollar per bushel. It is not to be compared in excellence with the tea
of China, nor does it approach in taste or good qualities the well-known
_yerba-mate_, another species of holly, which is found in Paraguay, and
is the common drink of the people of South America.

The old woman having gone on her way, and we being again alone in the
rude little shanty, the good-natured freedman told me his history,
ending with,--

"O that was a glorious day for me,
When Massa Lincoln set me free."

He had too much ambition, he said, deformed as he was, to be supported
as a pauper by the public. "I can make just about twelve dollars a month
by dis here ferry," he exclaimed. "I don't want for nuffin'; I'se got no
wife--no woman will hab me. I want to support myself and live an honest
man."

About seven o'clock he left me to waddle up the road nearly a mile to a
little house.

"I an' another cullo'd man live in partnership," he said. He could not
account for the fact that I had no fear of sleeping alone in the shanty
on the marshes. He went home for the company of his partner, as he
"didn't like to sleep alone noways."

Though the cold wind entered through broken window-lights and under the
rudely constructed door, I slept comfortably until morning. Before
Charles had returned, my breakfast was cooked and eaten.

With the sunshine of the morning came a new visitor. I had made the
acquaintance of the late slave; now I received a call from the late
master. My visitor was a pleasant, gentlemanly personage, the owner of
the surr