wer is in all respects a man of genuine
refinement and nobility of soul. He is always ready to give
information on his particular system of culture, and how he obtains
such large and fine crops. He is a good judge of leaf tobacco, and can
tell in a moment the quality of his famous variety. He is thoroughly
awake to modern improvements, and always willing to try new
implements, such as tobacco hangers or transplanters in his sheds or
fields. He is just the person one likes to meet, jovial and
good-natured; he naturally loves the plant he cultivates and uses it
freely; lighting his after-dinner cigar or evening pipe with a gusto
that is peculiar to the grower of tobacco everywhere. Indeed he is
hardly in a proper frame of mind to converse about tobacco until he
lights a cigar.

No other cultivator of the soil gains as many friends as the
tobacco-grower. His table is well supplied from the choicest his
larder affords and he cheerfully welcomes all to its side. He is the
friend of the poor and the companion of the rich. No meanness or low
chicanery is his. His attachment for home, friends, and country is as
firm and strong as for the plant he cultivates.

Olmsted in his work "The Seaboard Slave States" gives the following
description of a Virginia plantation:

[Illustration: Negro quarters.]

"Half an hour after this I arrived at the negro quarters--a
little hamlet of ten or twelve small and dilapidated cabins.
Just beyond them was a plain farm gate at which several
negroes were standing; one of them, a well-made man, with an
intelligent countenance and prompt manner, directed me how
to find my way to his owner's house. It was still nearly a
mile distant; and yet, until I arrived in its immediate
vicinity, I saw no cultivated field, and but one clearing.

"In the edge of this clearing, a number of negroes, male and
female, lay stretched out upon the ground near a small
smoking charcoal pit. Their master afterwards informed me
that they were burning charcoal for the plantation
blacksmith, using the time allowed them for holidays--from
Christmas to New Years--to earn a little money for
themselves in this way. He paid them by the bushel for it.
When I said that I supposed he allowed them to take what
wood they chose for this purpose, he replied that he had
five hundred acres covered with wood, which he would be very
glad to h