With all their old ancestral pride, they also brought to these shores those habits of idleness, dissipation, and reckless expenditure which had been so destructive to their fortunes in the old country. Many succeeded in securing from the wilderness large estates, and upon them they erected handsome edifices,—the bricks, glass, and other materials for which were mostly imported from England to Baltimore, and brought down the Potomac or Patuxent rivers to the site selected for building (so little available then to these settlers were the fine resources of the country). Some of these old mansion houses are yet standing,[1] but like the families that own them, much decayed, and remaining merely as memorials of past grandeur. The descendants of these first settlers of Maryland and Virginia are the proudest, and _some_ of them, alas! the poorest of the citizens of these States. These people are _sui generis_—unlike any other people I ever saw or read of. Each planter on his own estate, great or small, productive or barren, is prouder, and more thoroughly convinced of his own immense personal importance, than any throned, crowned, and sceptred monarch in Christendom or Heatheness. With all this, they are brave, generous, gallant, and hospitable, even to extravagance. It has been entered as a complaint against the older counties of Maryland and Virginia, that the taverns are wretched, and how can it be helped? Tavern-keeping is a poor business there, because the doors of every planter’s house fly open to receive the traveller who passes near his gates—and a welcome is extended to him with the cheerful, genial warmth of a country gentleman to whom the exercise of hospitality is a delight as well as a duty. It is a very common thing to see a perfect stranger ride up to the gate of a Maryland or Virginia planter’s farm yard, with the purpose of remaining all night—or a week, if his convenience requires it—and he is sure of a welcome, as long as he pleases to stay—for him the “fatted calf” is killed, for him the butt of cordial broached. Footnote 1: We have one in Washington. It is an old ruin—some hundred years older than the city—and stands near the junction of the Potomac and Anacostia. It is haunted, of course.