o, no, Dave, 'twouldn't do," replied the planter; "the conversion
wouldn't be genuwine--besides such things arn't proper, except 'mong
blood-relations--and all the Yankees, you know are first-cousins."

The conversation then subsided into a more placid mood, but lost none of
its genial, good humor. Refreshments were soon set before us, and while
partaking of them I gathered from our hostess that she was a Vermont
country-girl, who, some three years before, had been induced by liberal
pay to come South as a teacher. A sister accompanied her, and about a
year after their arrival, she married a neighboring planter. Wishing to
be near her sister, our hostess had also married and settled down for
life in that wild region. "I like the country very well," she added;
"it's a great sight easier living here than in Vermont; but I do hate
these lazy, shiftless, good-for-nothing niggers; they are _so_ slow, and
_so_ careless, and _so_ dirty, that I sometimes think they will worry
the very life out of me. I do believe I'm the hardest mistress in all
the district."

I learned from her that a majority of the teachers at the South are from
the North, and principally, too, from New England. Teaching is a very
laborious employment there, far more so than with us, for the
Southerners have no methods like ours, and the same teacher usually has
to hear lessons in branches all the way from Greek and Latin to the
simple A B C. The South has no system of public instruction; no common
schools; no means of placing within the reach of the sons and daughters
of the poor even the elements of knowledge. While the children of the
wealthy are most carefully educated, it is the policy of the ruling
class to keep the great mass of the people in ignorance; and so long as
this policy continues, so long will that section be as far behind the
North as it now is, in all that constitutes true prosperity and
greatness.

The afternoon wore rapidly and pleasantly away in the genial society of
our wayside-friends. Politics were discussed (our host was a Union man),
the prospects of the turpentine crop talked over, the recent news
canvassed, the usual neighborly topics touched upon, and--I hesitate to
confess it--a considerable quantity of corn whiskey disposed of, before
the Colonel discovered, all at once, that it was six o'clock, and we
were still seventeen miles from the railway station. Arraying ourselves
again in our dried garments, we bade a hasty but reg