is always spurred, and his hand ensigned with the riding-whip. Aside from
this he is known by his bearing--his frankness and firmness." Furthermore
he is a man of eminent leisureliness, which Van Buren accounts for as
follows: "Nature is unloosed of her stays there; she is not crowded for
time; the word haste is not in her vocabulary. In none of the seasons is
she stinted to so short a space to perform her work as at the North. She
has leisure enough to bud and blossom--to produce and mature fruit, and do
all her work. While on the other hand in the North right the reverse is
true. Portions are taken off the fall and spring to lengthen out the
winter, making his reign nearly half the year. This crowds the work of
the whole year, you might say, into about half of it. This ... makes the
essential difference between a Northerner and a Southerner. They are
children of their respective climes; and this is why Southrons are so
indifferent about time; they have three months more of it in a year than we
have." [17]

[Footnote 17: A. de Puy Van Buren, _Jottings of a Year's Sojourn in the
South_, pp. 232-236.]

A key to Van Buren's enthusiasm is given by a passage in the diary of
the great English reporter, William H. Russell: "The more one sees of a
planter's life the greater is the conviction that its charms come from a
particular turn of mind, which is separated by a wide interval from modern
ideas in Europe. The planter is a denomadized Arab;--he has fixed himself
with horses and slaves in a fertile spot, where he guards his women with
Oriental care, exercises patriarchal sway, and is at once fierce, tender
and hospitable. The inner life of his household is exceedingly charming,
because one is astonished to find the graces and accomplishments of
womanhood displayed in a scene which has a certain sort of savage rudeness
about it after all, and where all kinds of incongruous accidents are
visible in the service of the table, in the furniture of the house, in
its decorations, menials, and surrounding scenery."[18] The Southerners
themselves took its incongruities much as a matter of course. The regime
was to their minds so clearly the best attainable under the circumstances
that its roughnesses chafed little. The plantations were homes to which,
as they were fond of singing, their hearts turned ever; and the negroes,
exasperating as they often were to visiting strangers, were an element
in the home itself. The problem of accommo