I woke early in the morning, after having passed the night in dreamless slumber. Not a memory of the day's doings--not a vague shadow of thoughts, or words, or deeds--flitted across the chasm of sleep. When I opened my eyes, however, the daylight--faint and unconfirmed--was streaming in at the windows; and, for half an hour or more, I enjoyed one of those pleasant, idle lapses of existence which we so rarely have leisure to indulge, when life, like a river between its cataracts and rapids, rests unruffled by thought or action, without a ripple to mark that it is flowing on; and with nothing reflected from its tranquil surface but the faint, glistening images of the quiet things which surround it. I saw a patch of the blue sky through the window, and a soft white cloud float slowly across. I looked at the large, brass-topped andirons in the wide fireplace, and contemplated the lions' heads which adorned them. I made a human face out of the sleeve of my coat, as it hung over the back of a chair, with a large nose and a heavy eye-brow; and it looked so sleepy, that I had almost dropped into slumber again, out of mere sympathy, when suddenly the door of the room opened, and in came a nice-looking black boy, with a clean white jacket and apron, and a tray with several well-filled glasses upon it. He walked composedly up to my bedside, and presented the tray. "What is this, my friend?" I said, taking one of the glasses, which appeared full of a clear brownish liquid, some lumps of ice and some fresh green herbs. "The mint juleps, sir," replied the boy, waiting for me to drink, in order to take the glass away. "The mint juleps!" I thought. "I wonder if it is one of the laws of the land that every one must drink a mint julep before he rises." However, I tasted the beverage, and it was delicious and most refreshing, at least for the time. The coolness imparted by the ice effectually screened the palate from all the hotter things which it contained; and it was not till afterwards that I found it would be advisable not to drink brandy with mint steeped in it so early in the morning. Hardly had the little _limonadier_ gone, when my friend Zed appeared, and, while he was engaged with great skill and assiduity in putting all my dressing things to wrongs with true negro officiousness, he opened his morning budget of gossip by telling me that we could not have arrived at a better time, for there was soon to be a great camp-meeting in the immediate neighbourhood, where some very godly men were to hold forth.