questered nook; but argus, envious eyes are watching, and her
uncles and her aunts pursue, striking with beaks and claws to rob her
of her big all. It was a minature Wall Street and stock-exchange,
where human hogs and foul birds of prey fight to the death to plunder
their own brothers.

And now gently the night stole o'er us--

"Night, so holy and so calm,
That the moonbeams hushed the spirit,
Like the voice of prayer or psalm"

and until the "wee sma hours," while three generations listened
intently, we swapped stories with our generous "Crackers."

Our patriarch host had been a captain in the rebel army until he had
his "belly full of fight," as he quaintly termed it. His wife had
blest him with an even score of boys and girls, all now living in this
delightful climate, where he said, "no one ever died; they simply
dried up and blowed away into the happy hunting-grounds beyond the
stars." When a baby was born or a child married, this chief of the
tribe "hitched on" another house, until now the one-story dwellings
covered an acre of his vast lands.

He and his tribe raised on his great farm here in Bradford County
everything he needed to eat, drink, or to wear: his wife and daughters
spun and wove their clothing from the cotton grown and ginned on his
own fields; the delicious syrup and sugar which adorned and sweetened
the mountains of rye pancakes and floods of home-raised coffee, was
made from the cane which was grown, and ground on his own soil.
He grew his own tobacco, tea, peanuts, oranges, figs, pineapples,
bananas; he fattened his cattle and hogs on his own cassava and the
abundant wild grasses; his flocks of sheep "cut their own fodder," and
the wool and mutton was all clear profit. This "Cracker" family was
the happiest and most independent I ever saw on earth.

All around this plantation are millions of uncultivated acres where
the wretches of our city slums could be equally happy if our Carnegies
and Rockefellers would only loan the funds to colonize them there.
The millions of dollars, now worse than wasted by our selfish
millionaires? could thus soon make this earth a paradise like to that
above. After enjoying this free delightful life for several days, and
we were on the point of departing, I said to our host, "Captain, we
have enjoyed your hospitality immensely, and I hope you will allow me
to reciprocate," holding toward him a bank-note.

Instantly his eyes flashed angry fire, he shot