ve him plentiful food for meditation on a fine
afternoon.

Opposite him sat his kinsman and guest, Sir Charles Carew. He was
similarly equipped with pipe and sack, but there the resemblance to his
host ended, Sir Charles Carew being a man who made it a point of honor
to be clad like the lilies of the field on every possible occasion in
life, from the carrying a breach to the ogling a milkmaid. The sultry
afternoon had no power to affect the scrupulous elegance of his attire,
or to alter the careful repose of his manner. In his hand he held a
volume of "Hudibras," but his thoughts were not upon the book, wandering
instead, with those of his kinsman, over the fertile fields of Verney
Manor.

"You have a princely estate, sir, in this fair, new world," he said at
last, in a sweetly languid voice.

The planter roused himself from considering at what point of his newly
acquired land he should begin the attack upon the forest. "It's a fair
enough home for a man to end his days in," he said with complacence.

"We of the court have very erroneous ideas as to Virginia. I confess
that my expectation of finding a courteous and loving kinsman," a
gracious smile and inclination of the head towards the older man, "is
the only one in which I have not been disappointed. I thought to see a
rude wilderness, and I find, to borrow the language of our Roundhead
friends, a very land of Beulah."

"Ay, ay. D' ye remember what old Drayton sings?

'Virginia!
Earth's only paradise!'

And a paradise it is, with mighty few drawbacks, now that the King has
come to his own again, if you except these d--d canting Quakers and
Anabaptists, and those yelling red devils on the frontier, and the
danger of a servant insurrection, and the fact that his Majesty (God
bless him!) and the Privy Council fleece us more mercilessly than did
old Noll himself. I verily think they believe our tobacco plants made of
gold like those they say Pizarro saw in Peru. But 'tis a sweet land!
Why, look around you!" he cried, warming to his subject. "The waters
swarm with fish, the marshes with wild fowl. In the winter the air rings
with the _cohonk!_ _cohonk!_ of the wild geese. They darken the air when
they come and go. There in the forest stand the deer, waiting for your
bullet; badgers and foxes, bears, wolves, and catamounts are more
plentiful than are hares in England. You taste pleasure indeed when you
ride full tilt