My friend Mr. Elliot lived in a fine old house that had been standing for two generations; and he lived in a style worthy of a man who owned a river plantation, and who knew the baptismal name of his grandfather. You Philadelphians and Knickerbockers cannot be expected to understand what I mean, or rather the emphasis of my language, when I say _river plantation_; and therefore I take the trouble to explain that a river plantation is as different a thing from a sand-hill plantation, or even a creek plantation, as property in Water street or Wall street is from a lot up town. There is many a man among us who is undisputed master of hundreds of acres, who can scarcely pay his taxes: whilst his neighbor, who owns only half as much, but of a different sort, goes to the springs every summer, and sends his children into the north to school. You have seen the “Songs of the South,” I suppose, and I doubt not you liked them: but let me, as a friend, warn you against forming your opinions of us and ours from them. They were written by a poet, and if you have any idea of speculating in southern property do not trust Mr. Simms. The land of the pine, the cedar, the vine! O! may this blessed land ever be mine! Now for a summer residence this is all very well; health oozes from the resinous bark of the pine, the coolest breezes are playing amidst its leaves, and the most limpid water bubbles from beneath its roots: but the fine equipages which dash through your cities, and the well-dressed ladies who occupy them, would not shine long if they trusted to nothing better than such “land” to support their bravery. O! no, you must ask for river bottoms, or rich uplands, and then I will go your security for the cotton they will grow. Jane Elliot sings this song remarkably well. I was with her last summer at Saratoga, and one would think, to hear her, that she was dying to get back, from the pathos with which she would pray—to the guitar— “Hide not from mine eye the blue of its sky,” whilst at the same time I was perfectly aware that she was night and day teasing her father to spend the whole summer in the north, and then go to Paris in the fall. The beaux knew nothing of this however; and one whispered to another, “I say, Bob, what a sweet little patriot she is. Would not she make a capital wife, so domestic?” “I have a great mind,” said Bob, as they walked to the other end of the saloon, “to try and make an investment in that same ‘land of the pine;’ do you know any thing about the old man? Is he rich?” “Rich!” ejaculated the dandy, with that upward and downward inflection of the voice which indicates a good deal of surprise, and some indignation, “a great deal too rich to own such a man as you for his son-in-law. No, no, my fine fellow, that’s my game. You could not spend half her income, whereas, I flatter myself, _I_ can do that easily, and run the estate in debt by the end of the year.”