We shall see more of them before leaving the plantation.

A day on the water and a long drive are excellent preparatives for a supper of broad rice-waffles toasted crisp and brown before the crackling hickory fire, of smoking spare-ribs and luscious tripe, of rich, fragrant Java coffee with boiled milk and cream; nor does a sound night’s sleep unfit one for enjoying at breakfast a repetition of the same, substituting link sausages and black pudding for the tripe and spare-ribs, and superadding feathery muffins and soft-boiled eggs.

It is Sunday morning, but the service to-day is at the other end of the parish, some twenty miles away.  The sky seems brighter and the grass more green than on the work-days of the week:  the birds sing more cheerily, and seem to know that for one day they are safe from man’s persecution.  Certain it is that the wary crow will on that day eye you saucily as you pass within ten yards of him, while on any other you cannot approach him within a hundred.  At ten o’clock the household is assembled in the drawing-room, the piano—­with, it may be, a flute accompaniment—­is made to do the organ’s duty, and the full service of the Prayer-Book is read and sung and listened to with reverent attention.  There are yet two hours to dinner, and as the wild, wailing chant from the negro-yard comes to our ears we determine to visit their chapel.  If there was one point in which, more than in others, the Carolina planter was faithful to his duty, it was in securing the privileges of religion to his slaves.  Every plantation had its chapel, sometimes rivaling in its appointments the churches for the whites.  One of the largest congregations of the Protestant Episcopal Church in South Carolina, having lost its silver during the sack of Columbia, is still using the sterling communion service of a chapel for negroes which was burned upon a neighboring plantation.  The missionary is to-day upon another portion of his circuit, and we have a specimen of genuine African Christianity.  On one side the rough benches are filled with men clad, for once in the week, in clean cotton shirts, with coat and pants of heavy “white plains,” some young dandies here and there being “fixed up” with old black silk waistcoats and flashy neckties, holding conspicuously old mashed beaver hats, which have been carefully wetted to make them shine.  On the other are ranged the women, the front benches holding the sedate old “maumas,” with gaudy yellow and red kerchiefs tied about their heads in stiff high turbans, and others folded a la Lady Washington over their bosoms; behind them sit the young women in white woolen “frocks,” without handkerchiefs on head or breast; while the children who are not minding babies at home or hunting rabbits in the woods are gathered about the door.

Old Bob, the preacher, rises and fixes his eyes severely on the small fry near the door:  “We’s gwine to wushup de Lawd, an’ I desiah dem chilluns to know dat no noise nor laffin’, nor no so’t o’ onbehavin’, kin be ‘lowed; so min’ wot you’s ’bout dere.  You yerry me? (hear me).”