And these remarks of the captain convinced me--I had thought it before--that Virginia women should never undertake to travel, but content themselves with staying at home. However, such restriction would have been unfair unless they had felt like the Parisian who, when asked why the Parisians never traveled, replied: "Because all the world comes to Paris!" Indeed, a Virginian had an opportunity for seeing much choice society at home; for our watering-places attracted the best people from other States, who often visited us at our houses. On the Mississippi boat to which I have alluded it was remarked that the negro servants paid the Southerners more constant and deferential attention than the passengers from the non-slaveholding States, although some of the latter were very agreeable and intelligent, and conversed with the negroes on terms of easy familiarity,--showing, what I had often observed, that the negro respects and admires those who make a "social distinction" more than those who make none. CHAPTER X. We were surprised to find in an "Ode to the South," by Mr. M. F. Tupper, the following stanza: "Yes, it is slander to say you oppressed them: Does a man squander the prize of his pelf? Was it not often that he who possessed them Rather was owned by his servants himself?" This was true, but that it was known in the outside world we thought impossible, when all the newspaper and book accounts represented us as miserable sinners for whom there was no hope here or hereafter, and called upon all nations, Christian and civilized, to revile, persecute, and exterminate us. Such representations, however, differed so widely from the facts around us that when we heard them they failed to produce a very serious impression, occasioning often only a smile, with the exclamation: "How little those people know about us!" We had not the vanity to think that the European nations cared or thought about us, and if the Americans believed these accounts, they defamed the memory of one held up by them as a model of Christian virtue--George Washington, a Virginia slave-owner, whose kindness to his "people," as he called his slaves, entitled him to as much honor as did his deeds of prowess. But to return to the two last lines of the stanza: "Was it not often that he who possessed them Rather was owned by his servants himself?" I am reminded of some who were actually held in such bondage; especially an old gentleman who, together with his whole plantation, was literally possessed by his slaves. This gentleman[10] was a widower, and no lady presided over his house. [10] William M. Radford, of Greenfield, Botetourt County.