“I’ve hoed in fields of cotton, I’ve worked along the river, I thought if I got away I’d ne’er go back any longer; But times have changed the old man, And his head is bending low, For my heart’s turned back to Dixie, And I must go.” The late Mrs. F. W. Glen had a water-color drawing of old Jeff’s hut, which was prized highly for its faithful reproduction of the picturesque but rude dwelling. Poor old Jeff! the remains of his hut are still standing in the thicket. My father, in his earlier years, had a black man as a general servant. He lived so long in Canada that his story may be included in this sketch. He was born about the year 1814 in one of the counties in Virginia, which was so storm-swept during the great rebellion from 1861 to 1865. His home was in the track which Gen. Sheridan despoiled so effectually that he was able to boast, “Even a crow flying over must carry its own rations.” But during the first forty years of this poor slave’s life it smiled and produced grains and grasses and cattle in abundance. There his home was on the farm, where the system of agriculture is more like ours. The “plantations” proper are farther south, and the negroes employed on them are looked upon by the farmer slaves as belonging to an inferior race. “Only a plantation nigger” is a common saying among those employed on the Virginia farms. Owned by the head of one of the first families of Virginia, he had to thank him, too, for being the author of his existence. There were other sons born to this proud first family of Virginia. As they grew up they became sensitive of their slave half-brother, and induced their father to sell him. His new master farmed one thousand acres of land, but only about one-half of this was arable, the rest being broken and used mainly for sporting in the scrub. On this one-thousand-acre farm sixty slaves, male and female, were kept, and the new master thought seriously of making his new slave foreman. The old overseer, however, strongly resisted being put under a “nigger,” and his opposition, when putting it in such light in that day, was sufficient to keep the new slave out of the position. Digressing here just a little, we can discover what would be the wealth of one of the first families of Virginia, who as fire-eaters made such boasts afterwards. The one thousand acres could then be bought for $15,000, as they may be now; sixty slaves, at an average of $500, some being old and decrepit and others young, would be worth $30,000; stock and farming implements, say, $5,000. Total, $50,000. It is interesting to know what the capital of one of those great men who talked so much at the time of the war would be.