uch minds for eminent purposes would be folly. Even
supposing they could be educated--which is scarcely supposable, for it
would seem a contravention of Heaven's fiat--they could no more apply
this learning, which would simply be by rote, than they could go to the
moon. Such men are not unfrequently met with, and are designated, by
common consent, learned fools. Nature points out the education they
should receive. In like manner with those of higher and nobler
attributes, educate them for their pursuits in life. It requires not
the same education to hold a plough, or drive an ox, that it does to
direct the course of a ship through a trackless sea, or to calculate an
eclipse; and what is essential to the one is useless to the other.--But
I am wandering away from the purpose of this work. Turning back upon
the memories of fifty years ago, and calling up the lives and the
histories of men, and women too, I have known, I was led into these
reflections, and ere I was aware they had stolen from my pen.

The rude condition of a country is always imparted to the character of
its people, and out of this peculiarity spring the rough sports and
love of coarse jokes and coarse humor. No people ever more fully
verified this truth than the Georgians, and to-day, even among her best
educated, the love of fun is a prevailing trait. Her traditions are
full of the practical jokes and the practical jokers of fifty years
ago. The names of Dooly, Clayton, Prince, Bacon, and Longstreet will be
remembered in the traditions of fun as long as the descendants of their
compatriots continue to inhabit the land. The cock-fight, the
quarter-race, and the gander-pulling are traditions now, and so is the
fun they gave rise to; and I had almost said, so is the honesty of
those who were participants in these rude sports. Were they not more
innocent outlets to the excessive energies of a mercurial and
fun-loving people than the faro-table and shooting-gallery of to-day?
Every people must have their amusements and sports, and these,
unrestrained, will partake of the character of the people and the state
of society. Sometimes the narrow prejudices of bigoted folly will
inveigh against these, and insist upon their restraint by law; and
these laws, in many of the States, remain upon the statute-book a
rebuking evidence of the shameless folly of fanatical ignorance. Of
these, the most conspicuous are the blue-laws of Connecticut, and the
more absurd and crimi