drawing-room.

The old Virginia life had its color and charm, though its color and
charm lay in large part in things concerning which the writers have
little or nothing to say. It is true that a few planters had their
gorgeous coaches, yet Martha Washington remembered when there was only
one coach in the whole of Virginia, and throughout her life the roads
were so wretched that those who traveled over them in vehicles ran in
imminent danger of being overturned, with possible dislocation of limbs
and disjointing of necks. Virginians had their liveried servants,
mahogany furniture, silver plate, silks and satins; an examination of
the old account books proves that they often had these and many other
expensive things, along with their Madeira and port wine. But the same
books show that the planter was chronically in debt and that bankruptcy
was common, while accounts left by travelers reveal the fact that many
of the mansion houses were shabby and run down, with rotting roofs,
ramshackle doors, broken windows into which old hats or other garments
had been thrust to keep the wind away. In a word, a traveler could find
to-day more elegance in a back county of Arkansas than then existed in
tidewater Virginia.

The tobacco industry was a culture that required much labor. In the
spring a pile of brush was burned and on the spot thus fertilized and
made friable the seed were sowed. In due course the ground was prepared
and the young plants were transplanted into rows. Later they must be
repeatedly plowed, hoed and otherwise cultivated and looked after and
finally the leaves must be cut or gathered and carried to the dry
house to be dried. One man could care for only two or three acres, hence
large scale cultivation required many hands--result, the importation of
vast numbers of indentured servants and black slaves, with the blighting
effects always consequent upon the presence of a servile class in a
community.

[Illustration: _By permission of the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association_
The Mount Vernon Kitchen (restored)]

Although tobacco was the great staple, some of the Virginia planters had
begun before the Revolution to raise considerable crops of wheat, and
most of them from the beginning cultivated Indian corn. From the wheat
they made flour and bread for themselves, and with the corn they fed
their hogs and horses and from it also made meal for the use of their
slaves. In the culture of neither crop were they much advanc