Can any one enumerate an instance where evil grew out of the early association of the sexes at school?  In the neighborhoods least populous, and where there were but few children, the pedagogue usually divided the year into as many parts as he had pupils, and boarded around with each family the number of days allotted to each child.  If he was a man of family, the united strength of the neighborhood assembled upon a certain day, and built for him a residence contiguous to the school-house, which was erected in like manner.

These buildings were primitive indeed—­consisting of poles cut from the forest, and, with no additional preparation, notched up into a square pen, and floored and covered with boards split from a forest-tree near at hand.  It rarely required more than two days to complete the cabin—­the second being appropriated to the chimney, and the chinking and daubing; that is, filling the interstices with billets of wood, and make these air-tight with clay thrown violently in, and smoothed over with the hand.  Such buildings constituted nine-tenths of the homes of the entire country sixty years ago; and in such substitutes for houses were born the men who have moved the Senate with their eloquence, and added dignity and power to the bench of the Supreme Court of the nation, startled the world with their achievements upon the battle-field, and more than one of them has filled the Presidential chair.

Men born and reared under such circumstances, receive impressions which they carry through life, and their characters always discover the peculiarities incident to such birth and rearing—­rough and vigorous, bold and daring, and nobly independent, without polish or deceit, always sincere, and always honest.

However much the intellect may be cultivated in youth—­however much it may be distinguished for great thoughts and wonderful attainments, still the peculiarities born of the forest cling about it in all its roughness—­a fit setting to the unpolished diamond of the soul.

The rural pursuits of the country, and the necessities of the isolated condition of a pioneer population, which necessities are mainly supplied by ingenuity and perseverance on the part of each, creates an independence and self-reliance which enter largely into the formation of the general character.  The institution of African slavery existing in the South, which came with the very first, pioneer, and which was continually on the increase, added to this independence the habit of command; and this, too, became a part of Southern character.  The absolute control of the slave, placed by habit and law in the will of the master, made it necessary to enact laws for the protection of the slave against the tyrannical cruelties found in some natures; but the public sentiment was in this, as in all other things, more potent than law.  Their servile dependence forbade resistance to any cruelty which might be imposed; but it excited the general sympathy, and inspired, almost universally, a lenient humanity toward them.