It has been assumed by the outside world that our people lived a life of idleness and ease, a kind of “hammock-swung,” “sherbet-sipping” existence, fanned by slaves, and, in their pride, served on bended knees. No conception could be further from the truth. The ease of the master of a big plantation was about that of the head of any great establishment where numbers of operatives are employed, and to the management of which are added the responsibilities of the care and complete mastership of the liberty of his operatives and their families. His work was generally sufficiently systematized to admit of enough personal independence to enable him to participate in the duties of hospitality; but any master who had a successfully conducted plantation was sure to have given it his personal supervision with an unremitting attention which would not have failed to secure success in any other calling. If this was true of the master, it was much more so of the mistress. The master might, by having a good overseer and reliable headmen, shift a portion of the burden from his shoulders; the mistress had no such means of relief. She was the necessary and invariable functionary; the keystone of the domestic economy which bound all the rest of the structure and gave it its strength and beauty. From early morn till morn again the most important and delicate concerns of the plantation were her charge and care. She gave out and directed all the work of the women. From superintending the setting of the turkeys to fighting a pestilence, there was nothing which was not her work. She was mistress, manager, doctor, nurse, counsellor, seamstress, teacher, housekeeper, slave, all at once. She was at the beck and call of every one, especially of her husband, to whom she was “guide, philosopher, and friend.” One of them, being told of a broken gate by her husband, said, “Well, my dear, if I could sew it with my needle and thread, I would mend it for you.”