I would tell you something of the land of your forefathers. Something of Virginia. Not new Virginia,—not West Virginia,—but the Old Dominion and her people, such as they were when Plancus was consul. And, first of all, I will tell you why I have thought it worth while to lay the following sketches before you. 11. The world, in my day, is full of unrest. Everywhere anxious care and the eager struggle for wealth. Mr. Spencer’s Gospel of Recreation finds few adherents, and the Genius of Repose seems to have winged its way to other spheres. And I fear matters will be worse in your day; and, just as one, on a broiling July afternoon, looks with a real, though evanescent, pleasure upon pictured polar bears gambolling amid icebergs (in the show-window of a soda-water shop), so I cannot but think that it would be a genuine boon to you could I but lead you for an hour from out the dust and heat and turmoil of your life and bid you cease striving for a little while, while I (I, too, forgetting for a moment that every crust must be fought for), while I reproduce from out the cool caves of my memory certain scenes that I have witnessed. True, some of them I have not seen with my own eyes, but Charley has, or else Alice, which is just as well. 12. Yes, my lad, I think the glimpses I am about to give you of the old Virginia life will refresh your tired soul. Just as it refreshes mine to draw the pictures for you. For from me, as well, the reality has vanished. Our civil war (war of the rebellion, as the underbred among the victors still call it) swept that into the abyss of the past; but let me with such poor wand as I wield summon it before you. In Pompeii, the tourist, looking from blank wall to dusty floor, wonders what there is to see in that little hall; but a native goes down upon his hands and knees; with a few brisk passes of his hand the sand is brushed away, and a Numidian lion glares forth from the tessellated pavement. So I, brushing aside the fast-settling dust, would make you see that old life as I saw it.