“Fill your glass, Harry:  ’tis not the fragrance of the wine, but the sentiment connected with it, which prevents me from offering you a pipe.  The odor of the best Virginia would seem to me a desecration.  There are only a dozen bottles left in that cupboard.  I never uncork one except for a near friend.  ’Tis out of fashion now:  hock and champagne have taken its place; but, do you know, I like it the better on that account.  It reminds me of the past, and, though still a young man, it is one of my greatest pleasures to dwell on the picture which a glass of it never fails to recall to my imagination.  You remember Woodlawn?  For five-and-twenty years, during the whole of a long minority and subsequent travels abroad, those old bottles stood wreathed with cobwebs in the garret of the old mansion.  You drank one with me in 1859.  The rest were buried at the commencement of the war, and this is one of the few which survived it.  There are not many of your compatriots to whom I would tell the story of its preservation, for it illustrates a feature of feudal attachment which they persistently refuse to believe possible.

“You remember the stately old negro who occupied the porter’s lodge at Woodlawn, and who told you with such pride that he and his ancestors had always occupied a favored post near the great house?  You remember, too, his grand air, fashioned after the gentlemen of the olden time, the contemporaries of Washington, Rutledge and Pinckney?  And in what awe and reverence his fellow-servants stood of him!  Well, when the war fairly began, and all hope of amicable adjustment was exhausted, I did what every true man on either side was bound to do—­raised a company for the service, removed my family to an up-country farm, and left Old John in charge of my residence and interests in the low country.  The Federal gunboats soon appeared upon the coast, entered the bay and ran up the rivers.  Many of the younger people went off with them, but during the long and dreary four years which ensued Old John remained staunch at his post, cultivating the land as best he might, and sending constantly supplies of money and provisions to his mistress.  At last the whole thing broke down:  Lee surrendered, Johnston surrendered.  Troops as well as gunboats swarmed in all directions.  Not only regular soldiers, but raw negro levies, occupied the towns and were posted through the country.  Stories were circulated that I was killed, that I was captured; and the latter statement was true.  There were rumors that the land was to be divided among the negroes, and one dark night in the early summer of 1865 some drunken sailors, escaped from the gunboats lying in the bay, raised a mob of negroes from the various plantations and gutted nearly every house in the parish.  Among others they came to mine eager for wine, and John was pointed out by some of the neighboring negroes as knowing where it was concealed.  The sailors threatened his life:  he refused to tell.  They held a pistol to his