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 du 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 the elements of prosperity and true 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-whisky 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 regretful ‘good-by’ to our hospitable entertainers, and once more took to the road.

The storm had cleared away, but the ground was heavy with the recent rain, and our horses were sadly jaded with the ride of the morning.  We therefore gave them the reins, and as they jogged on at their leisure, it was ten o’clock at night before we reached the little hamlet of W——­Station, in the State of North-Carolina.

A large hotel, or station-house, and about a dozen log-shanties made up the village.  Two of these structures were negro-cabins; two were small groceries, in which the vilest alcoholic compounds were sold at a bit (ten cents) a glass; one was a lawyer’s office, in which was the post-office, and a justice’s court, where, once a month, the small offenders of the vicinity ‘settled up their accounts;’ one was a tailoring and clothing establishment, where breeches were patched at a dime a stitch, and payment taken in tar and turpentine; and the rest were private dwellings of one apartment, occupied by the grocers, the tailor, the switch-tender, the post-master, and the negro attaches of the railroad.  The church and the school-house—­the first buildings to go up in a Northern village, I have omitted to enumerate, because—­they were not there.