Aunt Jenny and Uncle Dick had no children, but took care of numerous nieces and nephews, kept their house filled to overflowing with friends, relatives, and strangers, and were revered and beloved by all. They had no pleasure so great as taking care of other people. They lived for other people, and made everybody comfortable and happy around them. From the time Uncle Dick had prayers in the morning until family prayers at bedtime they were busy bestowing some kindness. Uncle Dick's character and manners were of a type so high that one felt elevated in his presence; and a desire to reach his standard animated those who knew him. His precept and example were such that all who followed them might arrive at the highest perfection of Christian character. Uncle Dick had requested Aunt Jenny, when they were married, forty years before, to have on his table every day dinner enough for six more persons than were already in the house, "in case," he said, "he should meet friends or acquaintances, while riding over his plantation or in the neighborhood, whom he wished to ask home with him to dinner." This having been always a rule, Aunt Jenny never sat at her table without dinner enough for six more,--and hers were no commonplace dinners; no hasty-puddings, no saleratus bread, no soda cakes, no frozen-starch ice-cream, no modern shorthand recipes, but genuine old Virginia cooking. And all who want to know what that was can find out all about it in Aunt Jenny's book of copied recipes--if it is extant--or in that of Mrs. Harrison, of Brandon. But as neither of these books may ever be known to the public, their "sum and substance" may be given in a few words: "Have no shams. Procure an abundance of the freshest, richest _real_ cream, milk, eggs, butter, lard, best old Madeira wine, all the way from Madeira, and never use a particle of soda or saleratus about anything or under any pressure." These were the ingredients Aunt Jenny used, for Uncle Dick had rare old wine in his cellar which he had brought from Europe thirty years before, and every day was a feast-day at Elkwood. And the wedding breakfasts Aunt Jenny used to get up when one of her nieces married at her house--as they sometimes did--were beyond description. While at Elkwood, observing every day that the carriage went to the depot empty and returned empty, we inquired the reason, and were informed that Uncle Dick, ever since the cars had been passing near his plantation, ordered his coachman to have the carriage every day at the station, "in case some of his friends might be on the train, and might like to stop and see him"!