When his mistress lost her brother by drowning, Jack stole down at night from his bed and removed from the walls of her study every picture that contained a ship or a boat, or that in any way suggested the water. These pictures were of his own drawing, and the whole occurrence shows how well and intelligently he could sympathize with the afflicted woman.

It has been said before that the first idea which Jack mastered came to him like a pang. All his expression was bodily. His friends could often read his features, which, beaming, glowing, or darkening, showed not merely the depth but the quality of every emotion. Thirty years ago, when Jack lived, there was a great agitation in England on the Popery question. "Mam" was a stout Protestant, and of course he was whatever she was. He came home one day from mass, and, setting up a brush, began to bow before it, asking if it could hear him. For an instant he waited in a reverential attitude, and then getting no answer, began kicking the brush around the room, saying, "Bad god! bad god!" After that, whenever the subject of Romanism was adverted to, Jack would run for the clothes-brush, and vent upon it his hearty heresy.

The ease and directness with which he seized the meaning of difficult lessons was wonderful. Charlotte Elizabeth, in trying to answer some questions he put about the future life, drew a picture of a great number of persons in the midst of flames and fire, to represent hell, and then one figure apart, who, she said, was God's son, a man who came out of heaven, was never "bad," and would not have to go to the flames. But he allowed himself to be killed; and when he died, God shut up the pit where the fire was, and spared all the people. After a few moments' cogitation, Jack saw an objection to this atonement. He pointed out that the people were many—“ God's son" was one; and his earnest "What" showed that he understood the difficulty of one rescuing so many. She then cut a bunch of dead flowers into small pieces, and showed Jack that they represented the people in the pit. Then laying down a gold ring to stand for “God's son," she asked him which he would rather have. He struck his hand to his forehead, and with eager rapidity declared that the one ring was better than the whole room full of dead flowers.

A creature like Jack was sure to have many odd ideas and ways. Among the curious notions that came into his head, one was that he must have a hoop to run errands with. He said the stage that passed the house went so fast because the horses had four large hoops, meaning the wheels, and he thought if he had a hoop he could go just as fast. With him an impression was a verity, and when he got his hoop he had no hesitation in racing with the coach, nodding and grimacing defiance to the horses. It really was a help to him, and gave him a reason and object for going fast on his errands.

Charlotte Elizabeth once undertook to teach some of the poor children in the neighborhood, and to keep Jack employed during the lesson

made him monitor over the others. But a more unfortunate choice could not have been made. Nearly all the disorder came from the irresistible merriment which his actions excited. Seated in a high arm-chair he narrowly watched the whole party, and if anything occurred which he considered improper or disorderly, he conveyed to the culprit a warning of the consequences of such actions by slapping his own face, pulling his own ears, and kicking out his foot, all the while looking gravely and sternly at the offending one.

His range of thought was narrow, and, if his conversation were a proof, reverted almost entirely to religious subjects. He was content with a very quiet life, and when he could not talk with "Mam," preferred to sit alone in his little room over the barn rather than have the company of any other person. There he would draw, or sing, or think. It is an old saying, that if horses had a god, it would be a horse. And so Jack's deities-God and the devilwere beings of action and not of words. God was benignant, gentle, and with beaming face; Satan was always in a great rage when he saw any one doing good, and would stamp his foot and tear around, howling with chagrin. But when people were bad, the devil would laugh and clap his hands. Jack always showed a great anxiety when he talked to his fellowcreatures. Expression was hard work to him; but when he talked with God he never had the least difficulty. He would stand perfectly quiet, and seemed to be at ease, expressing with face and gesture the simple prayers he had to offer.

The rapidity to which he leaped to conclusions has already been spoken of. All emotions were intensified in him. When a petition against the admission of Romanists to Parliament was handed round, Jack implored leave to sign it, though he was under seventeen, the limit of age that had been fixed. He wept so hard that his benefactress consented, and with a face flushing deep crimson, and flashing eyes, he rather cut than wrote his name down.

When "Mam" lost her brother, Jack was waiting at table, where laughter was as hearty and frequent as usual. But he noticed that "Mam" did not laugh, and putting down the plate he had in his hand, looked sternly at the company, saying, “ Bad laughing!" walked out of the room in great indignation, stopping at the door to say, "Mam come; no laughing; gone, dead."

His was a beautiful though an obscured character, and when at the age of nineteen he died of consumption, those with whom he had lived felt that they had lost one who had for them a sympathy and affection that is not often found in life.

PSYCHOLOGY has relations to Theology. Ideas of Divine Being must be in our own minds, as well as arguments, to prove this existence. Questions of human ability and of free-will are discussed and decided.-Horace Mann.

THEY tell me of Italian lands,
Where flowers, by zephyr breezes fanned,
Perfume the evening air;

The home of music and of arts,
The land of true and loving hearts,

And birthplace of the fair.

They tell me, too, of vine-clad France,
Where peasants wheel in merry dance
Around the cottage door;

Of California's golden skies,
Arrayed in nature's deepest dyes,
As fair as Eden's shore.

But give to me the pastures green,
With hill and dale and slope between,
Where childhood loved to roam;
And give to me the forests grand,
Which bend beneath the storm-king's hand,
Around my childhood's home.

Let others sing the beauties fair
Of orange groves and southern air,
Where fancy loves to roam;
But memory turns with mournful oye,
While other scenes pass slowly by
Of home, a childhood's home.

No future land can ever be
One half so fair and dear to me
As that in childhood tried;
For there a mother's grave is made,
And there a sister's form is laid,

With brother side by side.

Oh, would I could forever stay
'Mid scenes where childhood loved to play
In years forever gone;

But life has cares which we must meet,
Ere we can press with sinless feet
The happy shores beyond.

Then let us work while work we may,
The morrow soon will be to-day,

To-day will soon be o'er;
And ere another sun shall rise,
The hand of death may seal our eyes,
To open nevermore.

DELTA KAPPA PHI.

THE TYRANNY OF FASHION.

BY MRS. JOHN HALIFAX.

As we sat in one of our city cars the other day, a young mother entered, dragging after her three babies, and scated herself with a sigh of such utter weariness that it arrested our lazy attention and set curiosity to work to trace that sigh to its source. She was a delicate little woman, with a face whose deep-cut lines and premature wrinkles told so plainly of overwork that it might have moved any iguorant looker-on to pity.

Yet there she sat-poor, little, pale, jaded, dull-eyed, worn-out, old young woman—a slave to the hardest mistress that ever shod an iron heel with velvet, for she was dressed from the crown of her head to the sole of her foot according to the "very latest" rules of Fashion. Everything she wore, though of inexpensive material, was cut as carefully and trimmed as

elaborately as if she were the laziest belle of Fifth Avenue, with a score to execute her senseless whims. Her three children were decked off in like manner, utterly regardless, if not of money, at least of time. Their little garments, all snow-white, were tucked, embroidered, braided, flounced to the last inch, shining with starch and faultless laundressing, till each poor baby was a moving mass of finery, just fit to set up in the window of a "Ladies' Emporium" as a sample of " Work of the best quality done here."

Now if people who have plenty of time and money to waste choose to make little puppets of their children, they can do so with some show of reason under the plea that they have nothing else to do; but for the mother of a family, who was evidently her own nurse, seamstress, and maid-of-all-work, to tax herself so needlessly, so cruelly, so absurdly as that! Is it not incomprehensible? And she is but one of thousands. Yet slow-brained people wonder every day why the women of this generation are not as healthy as their grandmothers. Reasons why are plenty, and this is one of them: The grandmother of that waxen-faced expiring fragment of womanhood had but two "best" gowns-one for winter, one for summer, and she wore them half a lifetime without wasting any anxiety or labor on either. With her mother's brooch, and her fine kerchief, and some rich old lace handed down by an amiable grandmother, she was equipped for any occasion of dignity or importance. Then, her children wore calico dresses, "linsey Woolsey" petticoats, and homespun stockings; played with doll, and said their catechisms, and were ever so much healthier, happier, and better children than the little men and women who walk our streets to-day.

Now, the laws of Fashion change as rapidly as the seasons, and are so arbitrary that the shape of a collar, the width of a ribbon, the size of a bow will determine one's claims to eligibility. And if it be folly in the rich to yield themselves to such tyranny, how much worse the folly of the poor, who must sacrifice their golden hours of leisure, their health, sometimes even life itself, in the senseless straining after empty and unsatisfying frippery which does not belong to them, and can not add one iota to their solid comfort and happiness!

And the children-ah, me! ah, me! Said a little lady of ten years in our hearing: •You see, aunty, my vail is real lace," and she held it up for admiration as if profoundly impressed with the importance of the weighty fact. Said another: "Will it do for me to wear this collar to the Park?" Why not?" we asked, innocently. Why, it isn't a Shakspeare collar!" she replied, with wide-open eyes of astonishment at our ignorance.

Oh, if mothers, rich and poor, would but give up this wearying struggle to comply with the demands of Fashion! if they would put upon their children comfortable, wholesome, neat, inexpensive dresses, and then devote the extra time and money to healthy recreation or

culture; if they would go out and romp with them, play merry tunes that will set their little feet flying over the floor; read good books, study good pictures; in short, fill every day's cup brim full of the pleasures that satisfy and can not harm, then the sweetness of such a childhood will blossom and bear fruit in the future when such frippery as beads and ribbons have done their poor miserable work and perished.

Children really need no such adornment. God made them beautiful, and beautiful they will be if His work is not tampered with. If they are healthy, happy, and innocent, they will always be the loveliest of God's gifts, and need no help of ruffles or embroidery to make them attractive.

THE MUTE AND UNSOCIAL.

THE dissipated and abandoned have had their advocates of reform. They have been followed to the scenes of their indulgences, and urged even at the brink beyond which there is no hope, to break from the spell of that infatuation which culminates in hideous death. But who has raised a voice of reform in behalf of those who, while of strict moral integrity, have become educated into muteness-into a distant coldness-into an unsocial and sour disposition? The class which is the victim of this distemper is large indeed, and a singularity in it is that people applaud their probity and virtue, and forget the freezing that is penetrating deeper and deeper; that freezing that stops the very flow of those spirits whose generous influences when withdrawn from the mind and body leave the one to unbroken melancholy, and the other to waste away by a protracted yet miserable consumption. What superinduces a more unhappy abandonment and loss of aspiration than melancholy? and what so soon generates this soul-racking malady as solitude and lack of sympathy?

Only through our social capacity can we be happy. Only through the exercise of our social qualities can mind and body perform every one of their proper offices; to stunt or stint them is to poison the very source of life at its fountains.

Look about you! See that deserted oneperhaps uncouth-perhaps a stranger. With

a kindly tongue address him-with warın hands welcome him; throw around him the warmest influences. Away with false "proprieties." They had their origin in artificial and not natural sources; they are rightly regarded in the right place, but are of the height of folly and evil as usages; they advertise the finical and shallow; an outrage of them in our communion as human beings-as members in good standing of a common brotherhood-of one blood-is right; one who can with true dignity and charity, with discretion, give kind words to the social outcast, the mute and unhappy; who can extend a cordial sympathy to the stranger-the stranger to comfort

AN AGED MAN. FROM the Wooster (Ohio) Democrat we take the following interesting account :

"There is residing at this time in the village of Jefferson, Plain Township, Wayne County, Ohio, five miles west of Wooster, the oldest man in the State of Ohio, and probably in the United States. His name is John Folgate. He was born in Lebanon County, Pa., in the month of February, 1759, making him 108 years old. He emigrated to Ohio in 1829, and has lived since that time an industrious, quiet, unobtrusive life in Jefferson. He was seventy years of age when he settled in that village, having already attained the period in life designated in Holy Writ as the usual limit of human existence, and at which most men, under the burden of many years, die. Physically, he is rather small, probably under the medium size, but exhibits a compact frame and a wellconstructed body, which, no doubt, eighty years ago, was one of physical excellence and muscular perfection. He was married at the age of thirty to Miss Elizabeth Wolgamottthe very mention of whose name starts bitter tears in those old eyes that have led him up. ward through the darkness and labyrinths of a century. His wife was born in Lancaster Co., Pa., three years before the battle of Lexington, and three years after the birth of the great Bonaparte. She had often seen and spoken to Washington. Her death occurred Jan. 29th, 1849, in her seventy-eighth year. An only Ichild was their wedded inheritance, and the old man, who carries upon his back the weight of well nigh a million hours, weeps and wonders that the son, aged fifty years, should be dead, and the father here. He was a teamster in his early years, about Baltimore, Md., and in Pennsylvania, but for the last sixty or sev, enty years has been engaged in mechanical labor. He was drafted in the war of 1812, shouldered his musket, but was discharged on account of his old age-so that fifty-five years ago he was too far advanced in life to be a soldier. At the time he was drafted he was keeping a tavern at a place called 'Sporting Hill,' near Baltimore. In politics he was always an oldline Whig, but in political as well as social life, while he had stern convictions, he had but few prejudices,"

His habits and manner of life would afford an interesting subject for consideration. We would like to be informed of their character. Can any of our readers furnish us the particulars?

SAD.-Said a poor little girl in the fourth ward of New York, as she was dying, “I am glad I am going to die, because now my brothers and sisters will have enough to eat!" Nothing could be written or thought more simply pathetic.

"THE STICK-UP NOSE."

A DASHING little black horse, with a little gem of a cutter behind him, and a bright, rosy driver, stopped near a large dry-goods store, and a group of boys on the corner stood and stared. It took them but a moment to scan the horse and cutter, and then they fastened their eyes on the young girl. "I tell you what, Joe, she's killing handsome," said one of them. "That long red scarf around her neck is a good match for her cheeks, and her eyes are as black as her pony. And didn't she rein up her horse as if she knew how! Julius Cæsar! she's splendid !"

"Well, I suppose I must get out and take in this bundle, but I'm tucked up so nicely in this robe, I don't want to," said the young lady to herself, glancing at the boys who were too far off to hear what she said.

Throwing back the robe, she started to get out, when she saw a boy standing near the store door, and looking at her.

FIG. 1.

and called out: "Come here, little fellow, and take this into the store for me, and I'll give you a quarter."

"That young lady is calling you, crookednose," screamed out one of the boys.

"You'd better name him Stick-up nose," said another; so Stick-up nose" was handed from one to the other, and went sounding through the air till it reached the ears of the little boy as, with flashing eyes and flushed face, he went up to the cutter to take out the bundle.

Mary Davenport, the young lady, heard it, and noticed the boy's air of embarrassment and indignation, and her heart went out to him at once.

"You needn't care for what those boys say," she said to him. "You are a handsome little fellow, whether your nose is straight or stickup, and I dare say their noses are not half as good-looking as yours."

This brought the tears, and the young lady, wishing to save the child from a regular cry, added: "There, now! I can see those noses on that corner, and one of them goes zig-zag,

46

Any woman that can say a good word for such a nose as mine must be a real lady," he said; and now it was Mary Davenport's turn to smile.

"Well, I can say a good word for such a nose as yours, and for such a boy as you, too," she replied. "I know by your looks that you are a firstrate little fellow, and you've got a splendid name. Harry McAlister. Why, you couldn't have a better. What's the name of that boy who cried out so loud: 'You'd better name him Stick-up nose,' and then turned round and showed his zig-zag nose?"

much obliged to you for taking my bundle into the store."

"I can't take the money," replied Harry, putting his hands behind him. "I don't like to be paid just for doing a little thing for a kind, polite young lady."

"Oh, but you must. You needn't call it pay, but take it to remember me by."

"Well, I'll do that, and I'll never spend it the longest day I live," said Harry, as he hurried away with his quarter, and with new and pleasant feelings. But he was obliged to pass the corner where the boys were congregated, and the rude fellow with the "zig-zag nose," Jimmy Snod, wishing to show his wit at the expense of Harry, called out: "Little chap! little chap! follow your nose and you'll be sure to go right, for it sticks up as high as a church steeple."

Harry McAlister's face not only crimsoned but burned with rage. "I'd like to lay that fellow on a level with the ground," he said to himself, "but then the young lady was kind and polite to me, and told me I was handsome,

FIG. 4.

80 I think I won't do it. I might tell him what she said about his 'zig-zag nose,' but I'm satisfied without it." Harry went on toward his home, an unpretending cottage where his humble parents lived, and as soon as he entered the house he repeated Mary Davenport's pleasant, warm words, the compliments she had paid him, and the insulting words of the boys on the corner.

Mrs. McAlister's face lighted up with pride as she thought of the attentions her Harry had received from the beautiful and charming young lady, and she pondered on the kind words until late at night; but Harry, although he did not forget Miss Mary's words, pondered rather on what Jimmy Snod had said. Again and again he repeated to himself: "Little chap! little chap! follow your nose and you'll be sure to go right, for it sticks up as high as a church steeple." As he lay on his bed thinking it all over, he concluded that it wouldn't be a bad idea to take Jimmy Snod's advice. "Why, if I follow my nose," said he, "it's a fact, as the fellow said, that I'll be sure to go right,' and, by and by, I'll be a rising man.

6

When a body's nose sticks up, it's a good thing to follow it."

Many years afterward, a stranger was entertaining the passengers in a car by telling them of a lad he once knew who was grossly insulted by some boys for having a stick-up nose. "One day," said he, after receiving two shillings (which he has kept to this day) for doing a favor for a young lady, he passed a group of boys, who stood on the corner, and they repeated the insulting words they had spoken only a few minutes before, and one of them the worst of the group-called out: 'Little chap! little chap! follow your nose and you'll be sure to go right, for it sticks up as high as a church steeple.' Well, the insulted boy was very angry at first, but he soon began to think seriously of following his nose, and from that time forward he did it. And it made him a prosperous man, worth fifty thousand dollars, and, what's better, a good man, first and foremost in every good work."

All the passengers were very much interested, one in particular, who said: "Why, where did you get that story? I've heard it before. What was the boy's name?"

There was quite an excitement in the car, and a general burst of laughter as Mr. McAlister concluded his story.

Soon afterward, as he and a dozen others were leaving the cars, the man who had been more interested than all the rest, jogged his elbow, and whispered: “Confound it all, if my name ain't Jimmy Snod, but don't you tell anybody as long as you live. I've often wished I could see you somewhere in the world and beg your pardon, and now, as this may be my last chance, I beg your pardon a thousand times."

Taken by surprise, and unable to control himself, Mr. McAlister broke out, as he grasped the man's hand and gave it a hearty shaking: "Why, bless your heart, Jimmy Snod, I owe you an everlasting debt of gratitude-you've been the making of me, don't you know it?" "Wasn't I a saucy, insulting youngster?" replied the man.

'Well, no matter about that," answered Mr. McAlister, as they walked on together.

"Ah, it's a great deal of matter, sir. How often I've wondered what had become of the boy whose nose I so insulted."

"But it was only my nose," said Mr. McAlister, wishing to relieve the man.

"Well, sir," wound up Mr. Snod, as he and Mr. McAlister parted, "that detestable performance of mine, and the sequel (meeting you after so many years and learning what my words accomplished), have taught me one thing, and that is, that the great God can bring untold good out of evil, and use the words that sting and pain a boy, to help him onward and upward in the world. I beg your pardon again. Good-bye, sir."

INTEMPERANCE IN THE SOUTH.

THE editor of the Sandusky Register gives the following as the result of his personal observation on a recent tour through several of the Southern States:

·

"The extent to which the drinking of intoxicating liquors prevails at the South, as a 'social custom,' is appalling to one who looks upon intemperance as the curse of our land. It is next to impossible to enter any circle, or, in fact, meet anybody anywhere, without having the infernal ghost of something to drink' forced under your nose. If you are casually introduced to Major Jones, late of the Confederate army, the first sentence after the salutation is, 'Step this way and take something.' You purchase ten dollars' worth of dry goods at a Southern store, and after paying your bill you are, with a wink, beckoned to a back room, where a free glass of whisky is gracefully proffered. You enter the business office of an acquaintance to chat three minutes, and before you leave, the business acquaintance is certain to say, Sam, fetch that black bottle from the shelf and two glasses.'

"You call at a Southern home, and your host would think that he had outraged the very spirit of hospitality did he not offer you some fluid that has the happy power of giving

the human nose the color of a lobster's claw. The wonderful variety of these fluids surprises one who knows the destitution of the Southern country in other respects. In point of strength and palatability they range all the way from dish-water to aquafortis, and their results have the same gradation, reaching from nausea to murder in the first degree.

"It would seem that the South had been sufficiently cursed by slavery, secession, war, and defeat; but the plague of drunkenness is now added. The morals, no less than the politics of the South, need reconstruction; and the field for reformatory work is a wide

one.

But one thing is plain, that so long as the offering of intoxicating drinks is regarded as a standard social custom, intemperance can not be successfully battled any more than the current of the Mississippi can be permanently stayed."

The Sandusky editor tells the truth. If slavery in itself was a curse, that curse was tenfold intensified by the constant and all-pervading use of the infernal fire-water. Planters acknowledged that most of the barbarous flogging, bruising, and flaying, inflicted formerly on the slaves, was done at the instance of, or by, whisky-drinking overseers. It was said that the slaves would spend their last cent for whisky, tobacco, and lottery tickets. Negro slavery has been abolished, but the soul-andbody-consuming slavery of whisky and tobacco remains. Many women use a " boonder," and swab their mouths with powdered tobacco, and, like nasty men, spit the foul stuff at a mark.

A big political war has been fought to preserve the Union, in which hundreds of thousands lost their lives, and the bodies of nearly four millions of slaves have been set free. That is a big thing! But another war-God grant that it may be bloodless!-must now be waged for the emancipation of men and women from those twin curses, whisky and tobacco. We are in for this fight. Our cause is just. We are on the side of God and humanity. Be it ours to aid in the rescue of

fallen man anu to remove the temptation, lest we, too, and our household, become engulfed by the insidious tempter. There is no security, no safety, save in temperance. And we call on all the world, men, women and children, to enroll themselves on the right side in this struggle. The South, so far as soil and climate generally are concerned, is a land of health, wealth, beauty, and sunshine. Let her people, white, black, and yellow, be freed from these blighting curses, and she will become the paradise of this continent. Men and women, will you take hold and help to remove this mountain? The way to redeem and bring prosperity to the South is through temperance, education, industry, and true religion Secure these, and "capital" will follow.

HOW FRANKLIN obtained a Situation.— When quite a youth Franklin went to London, entered a printing-office, and inquired if he could get employment as a printer.

"Where are you from?" inquired the man. "America," was the reply.

“Ah!" said the foreman, “ from America! a lad from America seeking employment as a printer! Well, do you really understand the art of printing? Can you set type?"

Franklin stepped to one of the cases, and in a very brief space set up the following passage from the first chapter of the Gospel by Saint John:

"Nathaniel saith unto him, Can any good thing come out of Nazareth? Philip saith unto him, Come and see."

It was done so quick, so accurately, and contained a delicate reproof so appropriate and powerful, that it at once gave him character and standing with all in the office.

COSTLY OBSTINACY - LARGE FIRMNESS.— There are two men in prison in England whose fate it has been to illustrate the nature of lawyers' bills on a magnificent scale. P. Foster, a farmer, now lies in Taunton jail for non-payment of a church-rate amounting to the sum of $375. But the cost of the law proceedings by which he was condemned amount to $710. J. B. Grant is immured in Whitecross Street Prison for non-payment of $8 00 church-rate, coupled with $1,234 costs.

[This illustrates a kind of martyr spirit which is based on large FIRMNESS and CONSCIENTIOUSNESS, without that large endowment of Veneration which is necessary to enable one to observe the injunction of St. Paul, "Honor the king," though he be like Nero. If these men think themselves right in refusing to pay church-rates, and if governed by strong conscientious scruples, they will stand out till starved into submission. But it is hard to" kick against the pricks." Better conform to the law of their country, or leave it for one which imposes no restraint on religious opinion. However, if men choose to abide their "obstinacy" rather than yield to the fates, why, it is their own affair.]

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A DAY ON JAMES ISLAND,

SOUTH CAROLINA.

I FOUND, near the Battery, three black boys in an unpainted and leaky skiff, who were willing for a consideration to row me over to the island. The waters of the beautiful Bay of Charleston were just rippled by the rising seabreeze, which blows here so freshly during the greater part of the day. My boatmen pulled lazily and in silence at their oars. They seemed to possess none of the loquacity and jollity we are wont to associate with the negro character. They had a sullen, morose, and sinister look, suggestive of piracy and murder; and I thought it a lucky circumstance that my voyage with such a crew was to be short, and within sight of land.

They put me ashore near where a lofty earthwork, thrown up by the rebels during the late war, crowned a slight bluff. On the right was a picturesque grove of lofty, long-leaved pines, and near them quite a little village of negro cabins. On the left, and just behind the fortication, I came upon a comfortable dwelling, probably, under the old régime, the residence of the overseer of the plantation, or, possibly, the winter habitation of the planter.

I found the present proprietor overseeing the operations of the plantation himself, and had an interesting conversation with him about the island and its productions. He pointed out to me the ruins of what once must have been a fine mansion on the opposite side of the neighboring creek, near which, he said, there was before the war one of the finest orange groves in the South-equal to any in Floridaan evidence of the semi-tropical character of the chain of Southern sea-islands of which James Island forms an important link.

Here I saw for the first time, in its normal habitation, and in all the glory of a thrifty growth, the long staple or black-seeded cotton, generally known as Sea-Island Cotton. My pleasant and courteous new acquaintance said that he was cultivating ninety acres, manuring as heavily and working as thoroughly as he was able; that his freedmen were giving him no trouble or cause of complaint, performing their regular tasks as under the old system, which gave them, when they chose to apply themselves closely, the larger portion of the afternoon for rest and recreation; and that it was difficult to get them to work in any other way. He mentioned this last circumstance as, with him, an obstacle to market gardening, which he said might otherwise, at this point, be made exceedingly profitable, all the common vegetables and small fruits growing there with the greatest luxuriance, and the markets of Charleston and of New York being almost equally accessible.

After making some inquiries in regard to the route to Fort Johnson, I set out on my tour of exploration My road, for some distance, lay through fields of cotton, corn, and sweet potatoes, all in the best possible condition of tilth and growth. Entering, finally, the Fort Johnson road, I found myself shut in on both sides

by an immense and impenetrable natural hedge of cassino and myrtle interwoven with creeping and twining plants of many species, among which the most prominent is the Muscadine or Bullace grapevine, now loaded with its delicious fruit. Through this hedge a bird could scarcely fly; and to the human vision it forms a perfect barrier. Here and there an opening gives egress from adjacent fields and permits an occasional glimpse of cotton fields, patches of corn and sweet potatoes, or of now untilled and weedy wastes; but the level character of the country precludes extensive prospects even where no obstructions exist. But the verdant walls which shut you in are, unlike fences of wood and stone, replete with objects calculated to interest and employ the mind, and to please the senses also. Their variety of foliage, their thousands of flowers, and just now the rich clusters of the ripening muscadine, make one little loth to be thus shut in.

Observing through one of the openings of which I have spoken, an old negro at work in a patch of the finest cotton I had seen, I entered and spoke to him. He said that the cotton belonged to him, but that he rented the land from the "Government." How it happened that the Government owns land here I could not learn. I inquired the distance to Fort Johnson.

"You see dose tall pines, massa?"
"Yes."

"Well, you pass dem, and you are dere.”

The pines seemed near, but the distance proved to be greater than I could have believed possible. However, I finally passed the pine grove, and found myself in the midst of the network of batteries and rifle pits which defended this important point-the eastern end of the island.

Ascending the walls of a fort, I gazed around me. The prospect I obtained was peculiar and characteristic. No sloping hillsides, no beautiful valleys, no background of purple-tinted mountains met my view, but in their place were level plains bordered and dotted with masses of semi-tropical foliage, green marshy flats, long stretches of white beach, and bright expanses of inlet, river, bay, and ocean. ToIward the east and south stretches the illimitable sea, flecked here and there with white sails; on the north lies dreary, desolate Sullivan, with its sand-hills, its forts, and its ruined village, and beyond, the bluffs of Mount Pleasant; northwestward, at the head of her beautiful bay, and in the embrace of her sister rivers Cooper and Ashley, rests, as it were on the bosom of the waters, the once proud metropolis of South Carolina-a city of melancholy ruins; and on every hand, near and far, forts, batteries, and rifle pits. Every spot possesses an historic interest. These laboriously constructed earth-works were the defenses of a people struggling against superior numbers, wealth, and power in behalf of a cause and a land they loved. These plains not long ago were tented fields; these groves filtered the smoke of a thousand camp-fires. Yonder are

the ruins of defiant Sumter; across the channel old Moultrie, of Revolutionary memory, may be faintly discerned, hidden in sand and flanked on either hand by the long line of earthworks-huge, shapeless heaps of sand they seem now-which were thrown up during the late civil war. Castle Pinckney, nearer the city, has a garrison, and over it floats the old flag.

Enough, perhaps, of sentiment. I had visited the island for the most matter-of-fact and practical purpose conceivable-to investigate its resources-to judge of its adaptation in soil, climate, and other conditions for the growing of cabbages, beans, peas, potatoes, peaches, grapes, figs, and strawberries.

The soil of James Island is sandy but naturally fertile, and much of it, unlike that of other portions of the State and of the South generally, has been improved and rendered still more productive by an enlightened system of culture. Its great staple has been and is Sea Island cotton; but all the fruits and vegatables of the temperate zone, as well as some that belong more properly to the tropics, grow here with wonderful luxuriance.

The climate, as already remarked, is semitropical. Whether it is the proximity of the Gulf Stream, or some other less obvious cause, which gives it this abnormal character, I need not stop here to inquire. It is certain that many trees and plants thrive here that can be grown on the mainland only, several degrees farther South. The orange and palmetto seem as much at home here as in southern Florida. I saw many trees of the former loaded with fruit and growing luxuriantly.

A late writer speaking of the climate of the Sea Islands in general, says:

"It is delightful in winter, which, on account of the great preponderance of evergreens, hardly differs to the eye from the warmer seasons, and rises to a splendor in summer and autumn that is never experienced elsewhere in the same latitudes, while the excess of heat is happily tempered by the sea-breezes, which, rising with astonishing regularity toward the middle of the day, bathe the country far into the interior with moist and refreshing coolness."*

In the forest growth of the island, nearly all the principal trees of the South seem to be represented. Conspicuous among these are the long-leafed pine, the live oak, the Spanish oak, the water oak, the great magnolia (M. grandiflora), and the cypress. The pine often grows to the height of more than a hundred feet, straight, strong, and majestic, and is the true monarch of the Southern woods. The live oak, too, is a magnificent tree, but just the opposite, in almost every respect, of the pine, throwing out from a short massive trunk numerous gigantic and far-reaching branches, covered with a dense, glossy, evergreen foliage, and forming what seems at a distance like a miniature mountain of verdure. Not so grand, perhaps,

E. B. Seabrook, in "The Galaxy."