Leaving the spring behind us, we pass up the long lane between two cotton-fields of a hundred acres each, in which the blackened stalks are still standing, as are the dried cornstalks and gray pea-vines in the field beyond. These will remain until the early spring, when they will be cut down and "listed in" with the hoe, for not a foot of this rich and profitable plantation has ever been broken with the plough. Incredible as it may appear, there is not a plough or a work-horse, and but one old mule, upon this highly-cultivated tract of one thousand acres. All the hauling is done by ox-teams, with three sturdy negroes to each cart, and the heavy cotton-hoe does everything else. Where one man and a plough could till three acres, twenty men and women with hoes 'ridge up the ground, scatter manure in the furrows, and draw the ridges down on it again. True, the surface only is scratched, and the soil is soon exhausted, but who cares for that when there is abundance of rich timber-land from which to clear new fields? and as to economizing labor, that is the last thing a planter cares about, for what are the negroes to do? None are ever sold, the "picknies" who swarm around every cabin growing up to stock the plantations bought for each child as he or she "comes of age or is married," and work has to be made for them to do. "What shall I put the hands at to-day, sir?" asked an overseer of an old planter when the last bale of cotton had been packed. "Hum! let's see! Well, set them to filling up the old ditches and digging new ones." For the same reason power-gins and saw-mills found little favor, the single-treadle "foot-gin" and the saw-pit and cross-cut employing ten times as many hands. It was the aim of every large planter to produce and manufacture by hand-power everything needed on the place. Of course, it required a heavy expenditure of labor and land to raise provisions for such an army of unprofitable workers, on which account slave capital was the poorest paying property in the world. The planter was wealthy, but he owned only land and negroes: when the latter were emancipated the former became useless; and this is the reason why the war so utterly ruined the rich land-owners of the South. ROBERT WILSON. OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP. '76. Pass, '75, across the Styx! Make way for stately '76, Who comes with mincing, minuet pace, Well-powdered hair and patch-deckt face-- An antiquated kerchief on: White-capped, like Martha Washington; Clock-hosed and high-heeled slipper-shod, To give no Nineteenth Century nod; Nay, but a courtesy profound, Whose look demure consults the ground. O rare-seen bloom! No flower perennial, This aloe-crowned Dame Centennial!