es required. These log-rollings were generally accompanied
with a quilting, which brought together the youth of the neighborhood;
and the winding up of the day's work was a frolic, as the dance and
other amusements of the time were termed. Upon occasions like this,
feats of strength and activity universally constituted a part of the
programme. The youth who could pull down his man at the end of the
hand-stick, throw him in a wrestle, or outstrip him in a footrace, was
honored as the best man in the settlement, and was always greeted with
a cheer from the older men, a slap on the shoulder by the old ladies,
and the shy but approving smiles of the girls,--had his choice of
partners in the dance, and in triumph rode home on horseback with his
belle, the horse's consciousness of bearing away the championship
manifesting itself in an erect head and stately step.

The apparel of male and female was of home-spun, woven by the mothers
and sisters, and was fashioned, I was about to say, by the same fair
hands; but these were almost universally embrowned with exposure and
hardened by toil. Education was exceedingly limited: the settlements
were sparse, and school-houses were at long intervals, and in these
the mere rudiments of an English education were taught--spelling,
reading, and writing, with the four elementary rules of arithmetic;
and it was a great advance to grapple with the grammar of the
language. As population and prosperity increased, their almost
illiterate teachers gave place to a better class; and many of my
Georgia readers will remember as among these the old Irish preachers,
Cummings, and that remarkable brute, Daniel Duffee. He was an Irishman
of the Pat Freney stripe, and I fancy there are many, with gray heads
and wrinkled fronts, who can look upon the cicatrices resulting from
his merciless blows, and remember that Milesian malignity of face,
with its toad-like nose, with the same vividness with which it
presents itself to me to-day. Yes, I remember it, and have cause. When
scarcely ten years of age, in his little log school-house, the
aforesaid resemblance forced itself upon me with such _vim_ that
involuntarily I laughed. For this outbreak against the tyrant's rules
I was called to his frowning presence.

"What are you laughing at, you whelp?" was the rude inquiry.

Tremblingly I replied: "You will whip me if I tell you."

"And you little devil, I will whip you if you don't," was his
rejoinder, as he r