The freshening breeze, tempered with the keen chill of the coming winter, made a lively music through the woods, as, floating along, it toyed with the fallen leaves that lay dried and sere upon the earth. There stood the giant trees, rearing their bald and lofty heads to the heavens, whilst at their feet was spread their splendid summer livery. Like the philosophers of old, in their calm serenity they looked away from earth and its troubles to the "bright above." I wandered on, with a quick step, in the direction of the doctor's. The recent painful events were not calculated to color my thoughts very pleasingly; yet I had taught myself to live so entirely _within_, to be so little affected by what was _without_, that I could be happy in imagination, notwithstanding what was going on in the external world. 'Tis well that the negro is of an imaginative cast. Suppose he were by nature strongly practical and matter-of-fact; life could not endure with him. His dreaminess, his fancy, makes him happy in spite of the dreary reality which surrounds him. The poor slave, with not a sixpence in his pocket, dreams of the time when he shall be able to buy himself, and revels in this most delightful Utopia. I had walked on for some distance, without meeting any object of special interest, when, passing through a large "_deadening_," I was surprised to see a gentleman seated upon a fragment of what had once been a noble tree. He was engaged at that occupation which is commonly considered to denote want of thought, viz., _whittling a stick_.