“Seen by the tired horseman halting at the woodland’s edge, this picture, steeped in the intense quivering summer moonlight, filled the soul with unspeakable emotions of beauty, tenderness, peace, home.
“How calm could we rest In that bosom of shade with the friends we love best!
“Sorrows and care were there--where do they not penetrate? But, oh! dear God, one day in those sweet, tranquil homes outweighed a fevered lifetime in the gayest cities of the globe. Tell me nothing; I undervalue naught that man’s heart delights in. I dearly love operas and great pageants; but I do know--as I know nothing else--that the first years of human life, and the last, yea, if it be possible, all the years, should be passed in the country. The towns may do for a day, a week, a month at most; but Nature, Mother Nature, pure and clean, is for all time,--yes, for eternity itself.”
The life about the place was amazing. There were the busy children playing in groups, the boys of the family mingling with the little darkies as freely as any other young animals, and forming the associations which tempered slavery and made the relation one not to be understood save by those who saw it. There they were, stooping down and jumping up; turning and twisting, their heads close together, like chickens over an “invisible repast,” their active bodies always in motion: busy over their little matters with that ceaseless energy of boyhood which could move the world could it but be concentrated and conserved. They were all over the place; in the orchard robbing birds’ nests, getting into wild excitement over catbirds, which they ruthlessly murdered because they “called snakes”; in spring and summer fishing or “washing” in the creek, riding the plough-horses to and from the fields, running the calves and colts, and being as mischievous as the young mules they chased.
[Illustration: “_The little girls in their great sun-bonnets._”]
There were the little girls in their great sunbonnets, often sewed on to preserve the wonderful peach-blossom complexions, with their small female companions playing about the yard or garden, running with and wishing they were boys, and getting half scoldings from mammy for being tomboys and tearing their aprons and dresses. There, in the shade, near her “house,” was the mammy with her assistants, her little charge in her arms, sleeping in her ample lap, or toddling about her, with broken, half-formed phrases, better understood than framed. There passed young negro girls, blue-habited, running about bearing messages; or older women moving at a statelier pace, doing with deliberation the little tasks which were their “work;” whilst about the office or smoke-house or dairy or wood-pile there was always some movement and life. The peace of it all was only emphasized by the sounds that broke upon it: the call of ploughers to their teams; the shrill shouts of children; the chant of women over their work, and as a bass the recurrent hum of spinning-wheels, like the drone of some great insect, sounding from cabins where the turbaned spinners spun their fleecy rolls for the looms which were clacking in the loom-rooms making homespun for the plantation.