, 1888-02-09
THE ANTE-eELLuM DAYS.
OId-Tims Hospitality OF Southern Plan
eIs-SnciaI Life In VIRGINIA

OId-Tims, Hospitality of Southern Plant
eIs-SociaI Life in Virginia.
Persons are still alive who saw the
prodigal style of living and the reckless
hospita lity of the planters in those DAYS,
when in the Charleston and Sea Island
mansions the guests constantly enter
tanned were only outnumbered by the
swarms of servants; when it was not in
congruous and scarcely ostentatious that
the courtly company, which had the fine
and free manner of another age, should
dine off gold and silver plate, and when
all that wealth and luxury could suggest
was Ia wished in a princely magnifcence
that W as almost barbaTic in its profusion.
The young men were educated in En-
gland; the young women were reared
like helpless princesses. with a servant
for every want and whim; it was day
of elegant accomplishments and
deferential manners, but the men gained
like Fox and drank like Sheridan, anG
the duel was the ordinary arbiter Of any
difference of opinion or of any point of
honor.
The agricultural life of Virginia appeals
with scarcely less attraction to the imagi-
hdllOIl Ol tIlS HONGl1SI-
caught the flavor of it in his "Virginians, {"
from an actual study of it in the old
houses, when it was becoming faded
memory. The vast estates-principal-
tiles in size-with troops of slaves
attached to each plantation; the hospital
ity, less costly but as free as that of
South Carolina; the land in the hands of
a few people, politics and society con-
trolled by a small number of historic
families, intermarried until all Virginians
of a certain grade were related-all this
forms picture as feudal like and foreign
to this age as can be imagined.
The writer recently read the will of a
country gentleman of the last century in
Virginia, which raises 4 distinct image
IF the landed aristocracy of the time.
1t devised his plantation of 5000 acres
with Its slaves attached, his plantation of
1900 acres and slaves, his plantation of
1900 acres and slaves, with other farms
and outlying property; it mentioned all
the cattle, sheep and hogs, the racing
steeds, the several coaches with six
horses that drew them ian acknowledge
ment of the wretched state of the roads,,
and so ON in all the details of vast do
main. All the slaves are called by name,
all the farming implements We're enum-
Grated and all the homely articles Of
furniture down to the beds and kitchen
utensils. This whole structure of a
unique civilization is practically swept
away now, and with it the peculiar So
cial life it produced.
The family was the fetch. In this
highly social caste the estates were en-
tailed to the limit of the law, for one
generation, and this entail was corn-
monty religiously renewed by the heir.
1t was not expected that a widow
would remarry; as a rule she did not,
and it was almost a matter of course that
the will of the husband should make the
enjoyment of even the entailed estate de-
pendent upon the non-marriage of the
widow. These prohibitions upon her
freedom of choice was not considered
singular or cruel in society whose chief
gospel was the preservation of the family
name.-Charies Dudley Warner in
Princeton Review.