Among numerous anecdotes illustrative of the folly of his neighbours, or his own prejudices and jealousy, I remember none which it would be proper to publish but the following:-
“Do you remember a place you passed?” [describing the locality].
“Yes,” said I; “a pretty cottage with a large garden, with some statues or vases in it.”
“I think it likely. Got a foreign gardener, I expect. That’s all the fashion with them. A nigger isn’t good enough for them. Well, that belongs to Mr. A. J. Clayborn.[?] He’s got to be a very rich man. I suppose he’s got as many as five hundred people on all his places. He went out to Europe a few years ago, and sometime after he came back, he came up to Natchez. I was there with my wife at the same time, and as she and Mrs. Clayborn came from the same section of country, and used to know each other when they were girls, she thought she must go and see her. Mrs. Clayborn could not talk about anything but the great people they had seen in Europe. She was telling of some great nobleman’s castle they went to, and the splendid park there was to it, and how grandly they lived. For her part, she admired it so much, and they made so many friends among the people of quality, she said, she didn’t care if they always stayed there. In fact, she really wanted Mr. Clayborn to buy one of the castles, and be a nobleman himself. ‘But he wouldn’t,’ says she; ‘he’s such a strong Democrat, you know.’ Ha! ha! ha! I wonder what old Tom Jeff. would have said to these swell-head Democrats.”
I asked him if there were no poor people in this country. I could see no houses which seemed to belong to poor people.
“Of course not, sir. Every inch of the land bought up by the swell-heads on purpose to keep them away. But you go back on to the pine ridge. Good Lord! I’ve heard a heap about the poor folks at the North; but if you ever saw any poorer people than them, I should like to know what they live on. Must be a miracle if they live at all. I don’t see how these people live, and I’ve wondered how they do a great many times. Don’t raise corn enough, great many of them, to keep a shoat alive through the winter. There’s no way they can live, ’less they steal.”
At the ferry of the Homochitto I fell in with a German, originally from Dusseldorf, whence he came seventeen years ago, first to New York; afterward he had resided successively in Baltimore, Cincinnati, New Orleans, Pensacola, Mobile, and Natchez. By the time he reached the last place he had lost all his money. Going to work as a labourer in the town, he soon earned enough again to set him up as a trinket peddler; and a few months afterward he was able to buy “a leetle coach-dray.” Then, he said, he made money fast; for he would go back into the country, among the poor people, and sell them trinkets, and calico, and handkerchiefs, and patent medicines. They never had any money. “All poor folks,” he said; “dam poor; got no money; oh no; but I say, ’dat too bad, I don’t like to balk you, my frind; may be so, you got some egg, some fedder, some cheeken, some rag, some sass, or some skin vot you kill.’ I takes dem dings vot they’s got, and ven I gets my load I cums to Natchez back and sells dem, alvays dwo or dree times so much as dey coss me; and den I buys some more goots. Not bad beesnes—no. Oh, dese poor people dey deenk me is von fool ven I buy some dime deir rag vat dey bin vear; dey calls me de ole Dutch cuss. But dey don’t know nottin’ vot it is vorth. I deenk dey neever see no money; may be so dey geev all de cheeken vot they been got for a leetle breaspin vot cost me not so much as von beet. Sometime dey be dam crazy fool; dey know not how do make de count at all. Yees, I makes some money, a heap.”
From the Homochitto to the suburbs of Natchez, a good half-day’s ride, I found the country beautiful; fewer hills than before, the soil very rich, and the land almost all inclosed in plantations, the roadside boundaries of which are old rose-hedges. The road is well constructed, and often, in passing through the hills, with high banks on each side, coped with thick and dark, but free and sportive hedges, out of which grow bending trees, brooding angle-like over the traveller, the sentiment of the most charming Herefordshire lanes is reproduced. There are also frequent oak-woods, the trees often of great height. Sometimes these have been inclosed with neat palings, and slightly and tastefully thinned out, so as to form noble grounds around the residences of the planters, which are always very simple and unostentatious wooden houses. Near two of these are unusually good ranges of negro-houses. On many of the plantations, perhaps most, no residence is visible from the road, and the negro quarters, when seen, are the usual comfortless log-huts.
Within three miles of the town the country is entirely occupied by houses and grounds of a villa character; the grounds usually paltry with miniature terraces, and trees and shrubs planted and trimmed with no regard to architectural or landscape considerations. There is, however, an abundance of good trees, much beautiful shrubbery, and the best hedges and screens of evergreen shrubs that I have seen in America. The houses are cheap and shabby.