By and by the pen would drop upon the desk, its task finished for that morning, and the worker would look up with an air of surprise at becoming aware of his companion and say:  “Near dinner time, old boy.  What do you say to a sherry and soda?” As there was only one thing to be said to a sherry and soda, this was the signal for repairing to the dining room.  By the time the sherry and soda sparkled hospitable welcome the sportsmen returned and after doing justice to the genius of the host in mixed drinks, they were seated around a generous table, most of the good things with which it was laden having come from the waters and fields and vines of Woodlands.  For if a world-wide war had closed all the harbors of earth Woodlands could still have offered luxurious banquets to its guests.  The host beguiled the time with anecdotes, of which he had an unfailing store that never lost a point in his telling, or declaimed poetry, of which his retentive memory held an inexhaustible collection.

The feast was followed by cigars, Simms having begun to smoke of late years to discourage a tendency to stoutness.  Then all would join in the diversions of the afternoon, which sometimes led to the “Edge of the Swamp,” a gruesome place which the poet of Woodlands had celebrated in his verse.  Here

Cypresses,
Each a great, ghastly giant, eld and gray
Stride o’er the dusk, dank tract.

Around the sombre cypress trees coiled

Fantastic vines
That swing like monstrous serpents in the sun.

There are living snakes in the swamp, yet more terrifying than the viny serpents that circle the cypresses, and

The steel-jaw’d cayman from his grassy slope
Slides silent to the slimy, green abode
Which is his province.

Now and then a bit of sunny, poetic life touches upon the gloomy place, for

                       See! a butterfly
    That, travelling all the day, has counted climes
    Only by flowers ... 
    Lights on the monster’s brow.

An insecure perch for the radiant wanderer.  The inhospitable saurian dives with embarrassing suddenness and dips the airy visitor into the “rank water.”  The butterfly finds no charm in the gloomy place and flies away, which less ethereal wanderers might likewise be fain to do.  Now and then the stillness that reigned over that home of malign things was broken by the sound of a boat-horn on a lumber raft floating down the Edisto.

A song written by Simms chants the charms of a grapevine swing in the festoons of which half a dozen guests could be seated at once, all on different levels, book in one hand, leaving the other free to reach up and gather the clusters of grapes as they read.  After supper they sat on the portico, from which they looked through a leafy archway formed by the meeting of the branches of magnificent trees, and discussed literature and metaphysics.

The Christmas guests at Woodlands would be awakened in early morning by the sound of voice and banjo and, looking from their windows, could see the master distributing gifts to his seventy dusky servitors.  In the evenings host and guests met in the spacious dining room where Simms would brew a punch of unparalleled excellence, he being as famous for the concoction of that form of gayety as was his friend, Jamison, down the river, for the evolution of the festive cocktail.