“Seen by the tired horseman halting at the woodland’s edge, this picture, steeped in the intense quivering summer moonlight, filled the soul with unspeakable emotions of beauty, tenderness, peace, home.
“How calm could we rest
In that bosom of shade with the friends we love best!
“Sorrows and care were there—where do they not penetrate? But, oh! dear God, one day in those sweet, tranquil homes outweighed a fevered lifetime in the gayest cities of the globe. Tell me nothing; I undervalue naught that man’s heart delights in. I dearly love operas and great pageants; but I do know—as I know nothing else—that the first years of human life, and the last, yea, if it be possible, all the years, should be passed in the country. The towns may do for a day, a week, a month at most; but Nature, Mother Nature, pure and clean, is for all time,—yes, for eternity itself.”
The life about the place was amazing. There were the busy children playing in groups, the boys of the family mingling with the little darkies as freely as any other young animals, and forming the associations which tempered slavery and made the relation one not to be understood save by those who saw it. There they were, stooping down and jumping up; turning and twisting, their heads close together, like chickens over an “invisible repast,” their active bodies always in motion: [busy over their little matters with that ceaseless energy of boyhood] which could move the world could it but be concentrated and conserved. They were all over the place; in the orchard robbing birds’ nests, getting into wild excitement over catbirds, which they ruthlessly murdered because they “called snakes”; in spring and summer fishing or “washing” in the creek, riding the plough-horses to and from the fields, running the calves and colts, and being as mischievous as the young mules they chased.