"The deserts of Africa are not to be compared, for loneliness, to a South Carolinian swamp. Oh! the comforts and blessings of a corduroy turnpike! These, you know, are made of poles laid down in the bottom of the swamps for a road, in humble imitation of that same most durable web. But the swamps gone through, and myself safely landed here--this Belville of yours is a most desirable place. Your father must have been a man of taste, friend Victor. The grove of Pride of India trees, in front of the villa, stands exactly as you left it; the vines run up and around Bell's window as beautiful as ever; the pigeons wheel over the garden and cotton-fields as gayly as of old. The flowers which perfume this delightful and balmy air, send up their sweets from the garden and the lawn as they have done these forty years; at least so testifies old Tombo the gardener. Your favourite horse thrives, and is none the worse for a trial of his speed and bottom which I made the other day in a race with my own impetuous thoughts. Your mother seems happier than I have ever seen her; and little Virginia Bell is the fairest flower on the Chevillere estate. Will you believe it! she introduced me to the housekeeper on my arrival as having been her affianced bridegroom ever since she was three months old, and then enjoyed a school-girl laugh. By St. Benedict, that laugh cut nearer to my heart than a funeral sermon. "Why have you not written to her and extolled some of my good qualities? She will never find them out! and as to my becoming a serious, sighing suitor, I am ten times farther from it than I was the first day I blundered into such dangerous company. If I were to elongate my phiz by way of preparative for a sigh, she would split her little sides with laughing at me. The fact is, I begin to think myself pretty considerably of an ass among the ladies, as your Yankees would express it. What shall I do? shall I run for it? or shall I stand here and die of the cold plague? If I laugh, she laughs with me; if I look serious, she laughs at me; if we visit, I am laughed at; if we are visited, I am stared at; and thus it is, day after day, and week after week. To your mother, I no doubt appear like a more rational creature, but before Miss Bell I am utterly at a loss and dumbfoundered.