A Southern writer has thus portrayed the Xmas time: "For weeks beforehand everything was full of stir and preparation. Holly and mistletoe and cedar were being put about the rooms of the big house to welcome home the boys and girls from school. Secret councils were held as to the Xmas gifts to be given to everyone, white and black. The woodpile was loaded with oak and hickory logs to make bright and warm the Christmas nights. The negro seamstresses were busy making: new suits for all the servants." The King was in the parlor counting out his money--to pay out for gifts of the season--and the queen was in the kitchen dealing bread and honey--to paraphrase Mother Goose. Into the stately plantation home, with its lofty white columns, its big rooms, and its great fireplaces, poured the sons and daughters, grandchildren, uncles and aunts, nephews and nieces. Assembled around the groaning board, the patriarch asked the divine blessing and the twin spirits of christianity were rife in the land. There was only a fitful sleep for the small boys and girls, who were up at peep of day, stealing: from room to room crying "Christmas Gift!" Out on the back porches waited the negroes in grinning rows to follow the example. All week the cabin fires burned brightly and constant was the rejoicing over their treasures, not forgetting the grand eatables and the big bowl of egg-nogg. Negroes are a religious as well as a superstitious race. At midnight Saturday it was their custom to ring the great plantation bell, and spend the next several hours in exhorting, praying and singing their curious, doleful hymns. The whites gave them instruction and training along these lines. Heart and conscious were alike cultivated--not alone the sounding brass and tinkling cymbal. Statistics show that there were 466,000 slaves belonging to churches in the South: Methodist, Baptist, Presbyterian, Episcopalian, and other sects. So the owners of these christianized people thought that they were doing missionary work in saving them from the cannibalism of heathen Africa. Both men and women were taught trades and useful occupations. There were tanners, shoemakers, blacksmiths, farmers, gardeners, horticulturists and carpenters among the men. The women could sew, cook, card, spin, weave, knit, wash, iron, in fact what they produced in this way would put to shame the acquirements and accomplishments of free labor. Many of the older negroes refused to be freed, when the mighty proclamation came. They would not withdraw from the protection of "Old Marster." Look at the product of these two generations of freedom. What is he? Well we know the painful answer.