with hospitable kindness; and especially was this the case toward young men who professedly came in search of a new home and new fields for the exercise of their abilities professionally, or for the more profitable employment of any means they might to have brought to the country.  Now, at seventy years of age, and after the experience of half a century of men and society in almost every portion of the Union, I can truthfully say, nowhere have I ever met so truthful, so generous, and so hospitable a people as the planters and gentlemen of the river counties of Mississippi, fifty years ago—­nowhere women more refined, yet affable; so modest, yet frank and open in their social intercourse; so dignified, without austerity; so chaste and pure in sentiment and action, without prudery or affectation, as the mothers, wives, and daughters of those planters.

The Bench and the Bar were distinguished for ability and purity; many of these have left national reputations—­all of them honorable names to their families and profession.  Nor were the physicians less distinguished.  The names of Provan, McPheters, Cartwright, Ogden, Parker, Cox, and Dennie will be remembered when all who were their compeers shall have passed away, as ornaments to their profession.  There is one other, still living at a very advanced age, who was perhaps the superior of any I have mentioned—­James Metcalf, who not only was and is an ornament to his profession, but to human nature.  He is one of the few surviving monuments of the men of fifty years ago.  His life has been eminently useful and eminently pure.  He has lived to see his children emulating his example as virtuous and useful citizens, above reproach, and an honor to their parents.

There was not, perhaps, in the Union, a stronger Bar in any four counties than here—­Childs, Gibbs, Worley, George Adams, (the father of Generals Daniel and Wirt Adams,) Robert H. Adams, (who died a Senator in the United States Congress when it was an honor to fill the position,) Lyman Harding, W.B.  Griffith, John A. Quitman, Joseph E. Davis, (the elder brother of Jefferson Davis,) Thomas B. Reid, Robert J. and Duncan Walker.  Time has swept on, and but one of all these remains in life—­Robert J. Walker.  Edward Tuner, then the presiding judge of the District Court, was a Kentuckian.  Four brothers immigrated to the country about the same time.  Two remained at Natchez, one at Bayou Sara, in Louisiana, and the fourth went to New Orleans.  All became distinguished:  three as lawyers, who honored the Bench in their respective localities, and the fourth as a merchant and planter accumulated an immense fortune.

The planters almost universally resided upon their plantations, and their habits were rural and temperate.  Their residences were unostentatious, but capacious and comfortable, with every attachment which could secure comfort or contribute to their pleasure.  The plantation houses for the slaves were arranged conveniently together, constituting with the barns, stabling, and gin-houses a neat village.