ry from a northern lady who has a country place near a
small town in Virginia. In the North this lady's family is far from
being unknown, but in Virginia, she assured me, all persons originating
outside the State are looked upon as vague beings without "family."

"They seem to think," she said, "that Northerners have no parents--that
they are made chemically."

This does not imply, however, that well-bred Northerners are excluded
from society. Even if they are well off they may get into society; for
though money does not count in one's favor in such a town, it does not
count against one. The social requirement of the place is simple. If
people are "nice people," that is enough.

Of course, however, it is one thing to be admitted to Virginia society
and another to belong to it by right. A case in point is that of a lady
visiting in a Virginia city who, while calling at the house of some
"F.F.V's," was asked by a little girl, the daughter of the house, where
she had been born.

"Mawtha," said the little girl's mother, after the caller had departed,
"you must not ask people where they were bo'n. If they were bo'n in
Va'ginia they will tell you so without asking, and if they weren't bo'n
in Va'ginia it's very embarrassing."

Some of the old families of the inner circle are in a tragic state of
decay, owing to inbreeding; others, in a more wholesome physical and
mental condition, are perpetually wrestling with the heritage of poverty
left over from the War--"too proud to whitewash and too poor to
paint"--clinging desperately to the old acres, and to the old houses
which are like beautiful, tired ancestral ghosts.

Until a few years ago the one resource of Virginian gentlewomen in need
of funds was to take boarders, but more lately the daughters of
distinguished but poverty-stricken families have found that they may
work in offices. Thus, in the town of which I speak, several ladies who
are very much "in society," support themselves by entertaining "paying
guests," while others are stenographers. The former, I was told, by the
way, make it a practice to avoid first-hand business contacts with their
guests by sending them their bills through the mail, and requiring that
response be made by means of the same impersonal channel.

CHAPTER XXI

THE CONFEDERATE CAPITAL

The axis of the earth sticks out visibly through the centre of each
and every town or city.

--OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES.

Richmond