"I was benighted, and sought lodgings in the very house I have described. 'Who lives here,' said I, on riding to the door. 'One Fifer,' said a white-headed, half-grown girl, so weak that she could scarcely stand. I sat up nearly all night with the sick woman and children. On relieving the poor man's embarrassments in the morning, I received the heart-felt thanks of the wretched family; and almost rode my horse to exhaustion, to get away from the wretched image imprinted on my memory. "Is this man a sample of the yeomanry of your country? I say, in deep and profound sorrow, I believe that he is. Where, then, does the evil lie? This is a question which every southern must soon ask himself, and one which Nullification cannot answer. "_Here_, then, is a triumphant answer--an answer in deeds, instead of words--in the happiness, the prosperity, and the substantial wealth of these simple and primitive Moravians. Here, where I am writing, is an industrious, intelligent, and healthy community, in the very heart of all the misery I before described. Let us then improve by the lesson, seek out the sources of their prosperity, find the point where their plans diverge from ours, and, my word for it (if there be no reason in the case), we become a great, a flourishing, and a happy people. "But I must take one small exception to the Moravian political economy. They require all the young gentlemen to be enrolled on one list, and all the willing young ladies on another; and the first gentleman on the list must marry the first lady; so that they are drafted for marriage, as our Virginia militia are drafted for duty. I do not know that this is certainly true; but if it be true, that a youth must marry the first that comes up, _nolens volens_, I would put in a plump negative. This excepted, they are worthy of all imitation, even to the drinking of home-brewed in their pewter mugs, and smoking long pipes around their council-table, when their little legislature meets.