'Mornin', sa! De Cunnel send dis with his compliments. Merry Christmas, sa!' Such was the salutation arousing me on the anniversary of the birth of Him who came on earth to preach the Gospel of love and fraternity to all men--or the date which pious tradition has arbitrarily assigned to it. And Pomp appeared by the bedside of the ponderous, old-fashioned four-poster, in which I had slept, bearing a tumbler containing that very favorite Southern 'eye-opener,' a mixture of peach brandy and honey. I sipped, rose, and began dressing. The slave regarded me wistfully, and repeated his Christmas salutation. I knew what the poor fellow meant, well enough, and responded with a gratuity sufficient to make his black face lustrous with pleasure. All through the South the system of _backsheesh_ is as prevalent as in Turkey, and with more justification. At the hotels its adoption is compulsory, if the traveller would shun eyeservice and the most provoking inattention or neglect. His coffee appears unaccompanied by milk or sugar, his steak without bread, condiments are inaccessible, and his sable attendant does the least possible toward deserving that name, until a semi-weekly quarter or half dollar transforms him from a miracle of stupidity and awkwardness into your enthusiastic and ever-zealous retainer. This, however, by the way. My present had the usual effect; Pompey became approbative and talkative: 'You come from England, sa?' he asked, looking up from the hearth and temporarily desisting in his vigorous puffing at the fire he had already kindled for me to dress by. 'Yes,' I answered. 'Dat a long ways off, sa?' 'Over three thousand miles of salt water, Pompey.' 'Golly! I 'fraid o' dem! didn't tink dere was so much water in de world!' adding a compliment on the supposed courage involved in crossing the Atlantic. Negroes have almost no relative ideas of distance or number beyond a very limited extent; they will say 'a tousan'd,' fifty or a hundred 'tousand,' with equal inexactitude and fluency. Presently Pompey began again: 'Many colored people in England, sa?' 'Very few. You might live there a year without meeting one.' 'I'se hear dey's all free--dem what is dar? dat so?' he asked, curiously. 'Yes; just as they are at the North; only I think they're a little better treated in England. We don't make any difference between men on account of their skin. You might marry a white woman there, Pompey, if you could get her to have you.' Pompey honored this remark with as much ready negro laughter as he seemed to think it demanded. 'I'se got a wife already, sa,' he answered. 'But 'pears to me England must be good country to lib in.' 'Why so?' 'All free dar, sa!' 'Why you'd have to work harder than you do here, and have nobody to take care of you. The climate wouldn't suit you, either, there's not enough sunshine. You couldn't have a kinder or a better master than Colonel ----, I'm sure.'