Riding was an accomplishment among the Romans, as it is in England and some parts of America; but in the South it is one of the necessaries of life. The bareheaded negro child mounts all the colts in the pasture, strains his horse over boundless meads, recking little of falls upon the yielding earth, which indeed seldom occur, and clings to his seat with the tenacity of a limpet. Before he has arrived at the dignity of the hat, he has learned to swim rivers and play the feats of a Centaur. My young master is not slow to practice in the same school, so that the cavalry has had some of its most daring and elegant riders from this part of the Union. I can no longer throw my leg over a saddle; but I still recall the flush with which, accompanied by gallant comrades, I swept through forests, which to an unaccustomed eye had seemed impassable, or, stooping low, pierced the tangle of a brake, up from the basin of some low and deeply shaded stream. For years did I look to the grooming of my spirited Rhinoceros, who repaid the attention by a docility which concealed itself under a show of perverseness. The long evenings of summer found me sallying on rapid expeditions to the estates of my father’s friends; and I passed more nights in such hospitable mansions than in my own humble lodgings. Hospitality is the law of the land. Where towns are rare and newspapers infrequent, and where even the mail in those days came only once a week, it was doing a generous favor to enter a neighbor’s doors for a long visit, the host would be out before I could dismount, and sometimes a bevy of ladies clustered at the door. Let me tell the truth. On looking back I perceive that while a flow of unimpeded talk, often prompted by large and capricious reading, made me welcome to every circle, I was, nevertheless, by no means successful in my personal overtures to the reigning sex. It was mortifying to me to observe, that many a roystering bumpkin, full of health and ignorance, made his suit in less time and with fewer embarrassments than I. Even my voyages and travels were of little avail. Indeed, in a self-contained community, where every thing goes by clanship and family tradition, and where the sight of a foreigner is commonly the signal for a joke, there is less éclat in foreign travel, than in seaports and great cities. I was glad, therefore, to fall back on county-connection. My father had married into a distinguished family, who, though poor, could hold up their heads. One of my uncles was high sheriff, and my cousin was in Congress. Revolutionary officers were still living who were of my kin. And I enjoyed a pretty free access to what are somewhat offensively called the first families.