"What do you charge for a glass?" he asked.
"Ten cents."
"Ten cents! Why, I can get just as much as I want for five."
"Not in this camp."
"Yes, sir, in this camp."
"Where, I should like to know?"
"Right round here."
The sutler crawled out from his tent to see about it, and stood transfixed with astonishment when he beheld the operation at the other end of his barrel. He was received with a hearty laugh, while the ingenious Yankee who was drawing the lager had the impudence to ask him if he wouldn't take a drink!
Virginia was pre-eminently the land of a feudal aristocracy, which prided itself on name and blood,—an aristocracy delighting to trace its lineage back to the cavaliers of Old England, and which looked down with haughty contempt upon the man who earned his bread by the sweat of his brow. The original "gentleman" of Virginia possessed great estates, which were not acquired by thrift and industry, but received as grants through kingly favor. But a thriftless system of agriculture, pursued unvaryingly through two centuries, had greatly reduced the patrimony of many sons and daughters of the cavaliers, who looked out of broken windows and rickety dwellings upon exhausted lands, overgrown with small oaks and diminutive pines. Yet they clung with tenacity to their pride.
"The Yankees are nothing but old scrubs," said a little Virginia girl of only ten years to me.