I recollected that I had heard my father say of this very youth: “I am never hard upon a fellow who is a fool because he can’t help it!” But I wondered at his gentleness when the epicure prattled on: “Yes, sir! a stew like this is fit for Democrats to eat. I wouldn’t give a Whig so much as a smell of the pot!” “You ought to have a tighter lid, then,” with the same good-humored intonation, and we passed on to see the roasts. Shallow pits, six or seven feet long and four feet wide, were half filled with clear coals of hard hickory billets. Iron bars were laid across these, gridiron-like, and half-bullocks and whole sheep were cooking over the scarlet embers. There were six pits, each with its roast. The spot for the speakers’ rostrum and the seats of the audience was well-selected. A deep spring welled up in a grove of maples. The fallen red blossoms carpeted the ground, and the young leaves supplied grateful shade. The meadows sloped gradually toward the spring; rude benches of what we called “puncheon logs”—that is, the trunks of trees hewed in half, and the flat sides laid uppermost—were ranged in the form of an amphitheatre. “You have a fine day for the meeting,” observed my father to the master of ceremonies, a planter from the Genito neighborhood, who greeted the visitors cordially. “Yes, sir! The Lord is on our side, and no mistake!” returned the other, emphatically. “Don’t you see that yourself, Mr. Hawes!” “I should not venture to base my faith upon the weather,” his eyes twinkling while he affected gravity, “for we read that He sends His rain and sunshine upon the evil and the good. Good-morning! I hope the affair will be as pleasant as the day.” Our father took his family into confidence more freely than any other man I ever knew. We were taught not to prattle to outsiders of what was said and done at home. At ten years of age I was used to hearing affairs of personal and business moment canvassed by my parents and my father’s partner, who had been an inmate of our house from his eighteenth year—intensely interested to the utmost of my comprehension and drawing my own conclusions privately, yet understanding all the while that whatever I heard and thought was not to be spoken of to schoolmate or visitor. It was not unusual for my father to confide to me in our early morning rides—for he was my riding-master—some scheme he was considering pertaining to church, school, or purchase, talking of it as to an equal in age and intelligence. I hearkened eagerly, and was flattered and honored by the distinction thus conferred. He never charged me not to divulge what was committed to me. Once or twice he had added, “I know I am safe in telling you this.” After which the thumb-screw could not have extracted a syllable of the communication from me. It was during one of these morning rides that he unfolded a plan suggested, as he told me, by our visit to the Democratic barbecue-ground some weeks before.