"You recollect, perhaps, the old woman's comfort in a time of great famine; 'she thanked God her neighbours were as bad off as herself.' I find very little comfort in this truly philanthropic doctrine, save from occasionally amusing myself with anticipations of Lamar's more fashionable dilemma. "The Kentuckian's pulsations seem to be regulated by a gigantic and equipoised animal impulse. There is very little sinking of the heart in gloomy anticipation, with him; he enjoys the present, uninterrupted by the past or future. After all, are not these hardy and free sons of the west the happiest of all created beings? They enjoy nearly every thing that we do, perhaps not exactly in the same degree, but certainly with as much of the heart, if not so much of the head; I really envy Damon his hearty and joyous laughs, such as I could once indulge in myself, and I have often asked what is it that has made the change? Can you answer the question, Randolph? "I once thought that you and Lamar would laugh it on through life, but it seems that you have scarcely started, each in his distinct career, before you begin sowing the seeds of your future sorrows, don't be frightened; it is the appointed race we must all run, sooner or later; we cannot be joyous and jovial college-lads all our days; but we may, and I hope will, be calm and tranquil old _country gentlemen_. "But pshaw! I grow old before my time; 'sufficient for the day is the evil thereof;' lay that flattering unction to your soul, and all will soon be well, that is now ill with you. "The more I see of these northern states, the more I am convinced that some great revolution awaits our own cherished communities. Revolutions, whether sudden or gradual, are fearful things; we learn to feel attachments to those things which they tear up, as a poor cripple feels attached to the mortified limb, that must be amputated to save his life. A line of demarkation in such a case is distinctly drawn between the diseased and the healthy flesh. Such a line is now drawing between the slave and free states, I fear. God send that the disease may be cured without amputation, and before mortification takes place. I know that this latter is your own belief. What think you now, since you have seen the greater extent of the disease? Truly, "V. CHEVILLERE." CHAPTER XVI. B. RANDOLPH TO V. CHEVILLERE. "Belville, High Hills of the Santee. "DEAR FRIEND, "I have heard of weeping willows, but I never saw weeping pines and black Jacks (scrub oaks) before I came into South Carolina; these are made so by the moss which here grows from the trees in long pendulous masses, which makes them look like gigantic weeping willows.