But by this time I had become sufficiently acquainted with the tone of the planter community to be able to do very well, with a few instructions from Mr. Altschul. I had learned that in the fat cypress lands there was a humanity which was very different from that complaisant kind dwelling in cities. It had been drawn from many States, especially from the South. The Douglasses were from Virginia, the Crawfords from ‘Old Georgia,’ the Joneses and Smiths from Tennessee, the Gorees from Alabama. The poorer sort were from the Carolinas, Mississippi, Missouri, and Tennessee, the professional men and white employers from a wider area--which included Europe. Several of the richer men owned domains of from six to ten square miles. They lived like princelings, were owners of hundreds of slaves over whom they were absolute except as to life or limb, and all their environments catered to their egotism. Though genially sociable to each other, to landless people like myself they conducted themselves as though they were under no obligations. Such manners as they exhibited were not so much due to neighbourly good-feeling as to their dislike of consequences which might result from a wanton offishness. When they emerged from their respective territories to the common view, their bearing seemed to say that they yielded to us every privilege belonging to free whites, but reserved to themselves the right to behave as they deemed fitting to their state, and of airing any peculiarity unquestioned, and unremarked by the commonalty. They were as exclusive as the proud county families of Wales. It may easily be seen, then, what a sight our store presented when about a dozen magnates of this kind, fresh from their cotton principalities, and armed, cap-à-pie, each in his own peculiar dress, assembled in it. In time, of course, I became used to it; and, considering their anxieties, the malarial climate, and the irritating ‘ague-cake,’ they behaved well, on the whole. Their general attitude was, however, stiff and constrained. Each slightly raised his hat as he came in, and their ‘Sirs’ were more formal and punctilious than, as neighbours or fellow-citizens, they ought to have been.