Although I did not go through the finest portion of the blue-grass region, it was a very pretty country to ride over, plenty of trees, cool-looking groves, and fine-looking farm-houses set back quite a distance from the road on a knoll, a winding driveway leading to them. Sometimes these farm-houses would have a cluster of tumble-down shanties near them, a reminder of ante-bellum times. All the houses, unless of the recent build, had the chimneys on the outside. Besides enjoying the ride through this fertile, beautiful-looking country, it was quite refreshing to be able to pass a group of children, quite mature ones, sometimes, without being the object of such facetious remarks as "Get up there, Levi," "Let her go, Gallagher," and so on, words that are always on the tip of the tongue of every white young American all through the West as well as in the East. But no such remarks ever fell from the lips of the colored children. They would open their eyes wide, and grin perhaps, but not a word was said, unless, as it sometimes happened, it was "Good mornin'," or "How de do." Much as I had to regret the ignorance of the colored people--for they hardly ever gave a satisfactory answer to an inquiry about roads and streets--still they never tried to say something smart as I passed by, a compliment that cannot be paid to the white people of Kentucky, or anywhere else. The first night out I stopped at a farm-house with a widow and a lazy son. The husband had been killed in the rebel army. The next morning at the breakfast table the old lady asked me what kind of bread I had to eat in California. I replied, "Very good, both home-made and baker's." "Well," said she, "my daughter has been visiting in California, and she says they make their bread there in this way: The women take a mouthful of water and squirt it over the flour, and then take another mouthful and do the same, and in this way mix it up. I don't want to eat any of their bread." I explained how the Chinese laundrymen sprinkle their clothes, and suggested that perhaps there was some mistake, but it was no use trying to enlighten a mind that probably, until the war, believed the Yankees had horns and tails.