"Your mother intended to wait here for some male friend, who has diverged a day's ride from their route home from the Springs; but she has now determined to leave this place to-morrow. I shall escort them as far as the Chevilleres' proud family seat, Belville. You will, therefore, hear no more complaints of the dreariness of the eternal pine-barrens, or the fever-and-ague appearance of the poor; except, that I will say now, once for all, that the poor of a slave-country are the most miserable and the most wretched of all the human family. The grades of society in this state are even farther apart than in Virginia. Here, there is one immense chasm from the rich to the abject poor. In the valley of Virginia, or in the country where you are, there are regular gradations. The very happiest, most useful, and most industrious class of a well-regulated community, is here wanting. Their place is filled up by negroes; in consequence of which, your aristocrats are more aristocratic, and your poor still poorer. The slaves create an immeasurable distance between these two classes, which can never be brought together until this separating cause be removed. You know I am no _abolitionist_, in the incendiary meaning of the term; yet I cannot deny from you and myself, that they are an incubus upon our prosperity. This we would boldly deny, if a Yankee uttered it in our hearing; but to ourselves, we must e'en confess it. If I am, therefore, an abolitionist, it is not for conscience-sake, but from policy and patriotism. "We can never rival those northern people, until we assume the modern tactics in this provincial warfare; that is, throw aside all useless baggage, and concentrate our energies upon a single point at a time. I have done with this theme for the present, and will repair to your friends. "Your mother knows nothing of our college-treaty, therefore she little thinks what a masked enemy she has let into the camp. Little Bell smiles, and enjoys our mutual understanding highly. But there lies the mischief; she smiles too innocently, and too calmly, and too openly, and has lost too much of that blushing mood in which she first received me; and I have thought several times that the little arch gipsy was laughing at me. If she had not been your cousin, and my affianced bride for the last five years, I should have taken leave. _You_ know I never could stand to be exhibited; and would prefer being shot, at any time, to being laughed at. I shall watch the little fairy, and see if she is making me her butt; if so, I will see them safe to Belville, and then--you shall hear from me again.