It was just sundown, but the servants were all at home after their day’s work, and they too were enjoying the pleasant evening time.  Some were seated at the door of their cabins, others lounging on the grass, all at ease, and without care.  Many of their comfortable cabins had been recently whitewashed, and were adorned with little gardens in front; over the one nearest the house a multiflora rose was creeping in full bloom.  Singularly musical voices were heard at intervals, singing snatches of songs, of a style in which the servants of the South especially delight; and not unfrequently, as the full chorus was shouted by a number, their still more peculiar laugh was heard above it all.  Mr. Barbour had recently returned from a pleasure tour in our Northern States, had been absent for two months, and felt that he had not in as long a time witnessed such a scene of real enjoyment.  He thought it would have softened the heart of the sternest hater of Southern institutions to have been a spectator here; it might possibly have inclined him to think the sun of his Creator’s beneficence shines over every part of our favored land.

“Take a seat, my dear sir,” Mr. Weston said, “in our sweetbrier house, as Alice calls it; the evening would lose half its beauty to us, if we were within.”

“Alice is always right,” said Mr. Barbour, “in every thing she says and does, and so I will occupy this arm-chair that I know she placed here for me.  Dear me! what a glorious evening!  Those distant peaks of the Blue Ridge look bluer than I ever saw them before.”

“Ah! you are glad to tread Virginia soil once more, that is evident enough,” said Mr. Weston.  “There is no danger of your getting tired of your native state again.”

“Who says I was ever tired of her?  I challenge you to prove your insinuation.  I wanted to see this great New England, the ‘great Norrurd,’ as Bacchus calls it, and I have seen it; I have enjoyed seeing it, too; and now I am glad to be at home again.”

“Here comes Uncle Bacchus now, Mr. Barbour,” said Alice; “do look at him walk.  Is he not a curiosity?  He has as much pretension in his manner as if he were really doing us a favor in paying us a visit.”

“The old scamp,” said Mr. Barbour, “he has a frolic in view; he wants to go off to-morrow either to a campmeeting, or a barbecue.  He looks as if he were hooked together, and could be taken apart limb by limb.”

Bacchus had commenced bowing some time before he reached the piazza, but on ascending the steps he made a particularly low bow to his master, and then in the same manner, though with much less reverence, paid his respects to the others.

“Well, Bacchus?” said Mr. Weston.

“How is yer health dis evenin, master?  You aint been so well latterly.  We’ll soon have green corn though, and that helps dispepsy wonderful.”

“It may be good for dyspepsia, Bacchus,” said Mr. Weston, “but it sometimes gives old people cholera morbus, when they eat it raw; so I advise you to remember last year’s experience, and roast it before you eat it.”