t fried chickens
or coffee. In lieu of the latter we had cold tea, with a slice of
lemon in each goblet. After a long talk on matters of no concern to
the reader, during which the general related a number of capital
war-anecdotes, I contrived, as is my wont, to turn the conversation
upon agricultural topics, with the view of imparting to him a modicum
of that consummate farming wisdom which appertains to every thoroughly
conceited scribbler.

"Fine country you have, general."

"Yes: from Lugston to the Tennessee line, two hundred good miles, the
country is as fine as the sun ever shone upon."

"Appears to be thinly settled."

"You may well say so. Between my house and the station there are eight
or nine thousand acres, most of it excellent land, belonging to only
five or six owners."

"Indeed! What are such immense tracts good for now-a-days?"

"Good for grass."

"But they seem to pay little attention to grass."

"True. It is a splendid cheese country, as I have proved, but our
people are not up to that as yet."

"They _will_ grow tobacco. I saw some fine timber sacrificed for the
sake of new-ground tobacco."

"And why not? A man gets tired of paying taxes for twenty or thirty
years on timber which yields him nothing."

I smiled an invisible smile, reverting in my thoughts to an assault
I had made the week before upon my kinsman in Buckingham. "William,"
said I, "why will you Southside people continue to exhaust your land
with tobacco?"

"Dick," he replied, "you are the doggonedest fool out of jail. _You_,
raised in Virginia, and ask a question like that! Wheat is uncertain,
corn doesn't pay, we are too far from market for vegetables, too poor
to put our lands in grass, and tobacco is the only thing that will
fetch money. As for exhausting land, plenty of tobacco is raised in
Ohio and Connecticut, and you never hear anybody talk about exhausting
land there."

"Yes, but there they manure heavily, giving back to the land as much
as they take, or more."

"Well, old-field pine is good enough manure for a man who has plenty
of land and can take his time."

Thus in two instances my anti-tobacco wisdom turned out to be about
as profitable as King James's memorable _Counterblast_ against the
beloved weed of Virginia.

"But, general," said I, "surely your neighbors don't want to retain
such vast tracts of land."

"Certainly not. Men do not like to part with good land, and if my
friends could set their fa