When I hear the lament of to-day, that there is no money in poetry, I recall my early lesson to the contrary. My first effort having been so successful I gave "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" as a voluntary, in the mercenary hope that the twinkles, like the drops, might be transmuted into gold. After curtseying to my great-grandfather my thanks for the dollar I ran across the room and, looking inquiringly at Judge Mason, asked:
"Are you anybody's great-grandfather? No, 'course you couldn't be, 'cause you've got two eyes."
As my own great-grandfather was the only relation of that rank whom I had ever seen, it had been borne in upon my mind that a single eye was the distinguishing characteristic of great-grandfathers.
Judge Mason's manner of smoking next attracted my attention. I had never seen a pipe used except by the negroes on the plantation.
"Did you run off and play with the little colored children and not mind your black mammy and learn bad habits when you were a little boy is the reason you smoke pipes now?"
"No," he replied. "I never learned any bad habits from the negroes. They have very few bad habits. All the bad habits I have ever learned were from white people."
Knocking the ashes out of his pipe he said:
"My child, when great-grandfathers were little babies this—" taking out his tobacco-bag and filling his pipe from it—"was the only real money in this country and was of greater value than the kind which you now hold in your little hand."
Then he went on to tell me in words that a child could understand that money debts were not even recoverable. Tobacco debts only were valid, and to sell bad tobacco or pay a debt with it was a crime, precisely as it is now to sell or pay counterfeit money. Tobacco was the currency, and an excess was as injurious as an over-issue of bank paper, depreciating on the market and causing everything to rise in price. Great care was taken to burn bad tobacco, and it was as important to the uniformity of the currency in those days as is now the exclusion of counterfeits. All the viewings, censorships, inspections and regulations of the amount of tobacco to be cultivated by each planter, the quality to be gathered from each plant, the rules prescribed, were as important as the laws of the mint are now.