A great-uncle of this family, unlike the coach, never would become republicanized; and his obstinate loyalty to the English crown, with his devotion to everything English, gained for him the title "English Louis," by which name he is spoken of in the family to this day. An old lady told me not long ago that she remembered, when a child, the arrival of "English Louis" at Rustic one night, and his conversation as they sat around the fire,--how he deplored a republican form of government, and the misfortunes which would result from it, saying: "All may go smoothly for about seventy years, when civil war will set in. First it will be about these negro slaves we have around us, and after that it will be something else." And how true "English Louis'" prediction has proven.[13] [13] On the route to Rustic was a small village called Liberty, approaching which, and hearing the name, "English Louis" swore he would not pass through any such----little republican town, and, turning his horses, traveled many miles out of his way to avoid it. Doubtless this gentleman was avoided and proscribed on account of his English proclivities. For at that day the spirit of republicanism and hatred to England ran high; so that an old gentleman--one of our relatives whom I well remember--actually took from his parlor walls his coat-of-arms, which had been brought by his grandfather from England, and, carrying it out in his yard, built a fire, and, collecting his children around it to see it burn, said: "Thus let everything English perish!" Should I say what I think of this proceeding I would not be considered, perhaps, a true republican patriot. I must add a few words to my previous mention of Smithfield, in Montgomery County, the county which flows with healing waters. Smithfield, like Greenfield, is owned by the descendants of the first white family who settled there after the Indians, and its verdant pastures, noble forests, and mountain streams and springs, form a prospect wondrously beautiful. This splendid estate descended to three brothers of the Preston family, who equally divided it, the eldest keeping the homestead, and the others building attractive homes on their separate plantations. The old homestead was quite antique in appearance. Inside, the high mantelpieces reaching nearly to the ceiling, which was also high, and the high wainscoting, together with the old furniture, made a picture of the olden time. When I first visited this place, the old grandmother, then eighty years of age, was living. She, like the old lady at Rustic, had been a belle in eastern Virginia in her youth. When she married the owner of Smithfield sixty years before, she made the bridal jaunt from Norfolk to this place on horseback, two hundred miles. Still exceedingly intelligent and interesting, she entertained us with various incidents of her early life, and wished to hear all the old songs which she had then heard and sung herself.