family every month.  The social class to which he belongs is below the highest,—­namely, that of the planter,—­and above that of the whites of meanest condition.  Formerly one of the three overseers on the plantation which I am now describing was a colored man who had been a slave before the war, a foreman in the field afterward, and was then promoted, in consequence of his efficiency, to the responsible position which I have named.  He was a man of unusual intelligence, and gave the highest satisfaction.  His mind was almost painfully directed to the performance of his duties, and the only fault that could be found with him was an occasional inclination to be too severe with his own race.  Very naturally, he was looked up to by the latter as successful and prosperous, and his influence in consequence was very great.  Unlike most of his fellows, he was given to hoarding what he earned, and in a few years was able to buy a plantation of his own; and there he is now engaged in cultivating his own land.

There is a population of about four hundred negroes on the three divisions of the plantation, this number including both sexes and every age and shade of color.  All of the older set, with few exceptions, were the slaves of their employer, and did not leave him even in the restless and excited hour of their emancipation.  Born on the place, they have spent the whole of their long lives there, and consider it to be as much their home as it is that of its owner.  In fact, the negroes here are remote from those influences that lead so many others to migrate.  The plantation is eighteen miles from a railroad and forty from a town, and is set down in a very sparsely settled country that has been only partially cleared of its forests.  It has a teeming population of its own, which satisfies the social instincts of its inhabitants as much as if they were collected together in a small town.  In consequence of all these facts, and in spite of the new state of things which the war produced, there survives in its confines something of that baronial spirit which we observe on a landed estate in England at the present day, where every man, woman, and child is accustomed to think of the landlord as the fountain-head of power and benefits.  A similar spirit of loyal subordination prevails particularly among the oldest inhabitants of the plantation, who were once the absolute chattels of its owner, and who look upon that fact as creating an obligation in him to support them in their decrepitude.  Being too far in the sere and yellow leaf to work, they are provided every month with enough rations to meet their wants, and in total idleness they calmly await the inevitable hour when their bones will be laid beside those of their fathers.  There are few more picturesque figures than are many of these old negroes, who passed the heyday of their strength before they were freed, and who, born in slavery, survived to a new era only to find themselves in the last stages of old age.  They are regarded