The life of the typical Virginia lady of those luxurious days was an unending round of social pleasures, and this life in its turn was typical of that of the Southern woman of refinement in all sections, though presenting that life in its most enlarged and broadened aspects. She had her responsibilities, and she recognized them; she was the queen of a vast estate, on which many souls looked to her for comfort and help, and, as a rule, she responded to their call with all alacrity. To her slaves, at least as far as the house servants were concerned, she was friend rather than mistress, acknowledging them as part of her family and caring for them almost as for her own children. But the trouble was that she generally did these things vicariously; she delegated her powers, seeing to it, indeed, that they were administered as she would have them, but herself doing little. She was given over, for her own part, to the demands of society and to the requirements of hospitality; and Southern hospitality is proverbial, and the courtly welcome and gracious attentions of the hostess of the plantation mansion in the ante-bellum days were among the most agreeable and vivid impressions of her guests. Nor with all the social distinction of the southern household was there a sacrifice of a single charm of home life. Every important domestic event was attended with becoming ceremony. The arrival of the newborn, the home gatherings of later years, and the wedding,--these were occasions to be celebrated by all; occasions when the tenderest family sentiment was manifested. At such times, it may be remarked, the system of domestic slavery appealed rather as a virtue than as a stain, for the household slaves were interested sharers in the joys of the family. In this connection, one is reminded of the Georgia negress who, on being asked if she were the slave of a certain person, replied: "Yes, I belong to them, and they belong to me." In her home the typical Virginia lady did little with her own hands; she directed, but she would have thought it shame to labor even in such a cause. Her hands were too delicate to work, her feet too dainty to press the ground; she never walked where she could ride, and carriages were always at her command. Her winters, if she lived on her plantation, were passed in a round of pleasures, of balls and minor social functions; her summers she spent at the famous "Springs," whither she drove in her cumbrous but comfortable carriage,--in which way, indeed, some of the more enthusiastic lovers of those "Springs" came even from the southernmost bournes of the land. A friend of the writer, for instance, once told him how she had often travelled in this manner from New Orleans to the Greenbrier White Sulphur Springs in those halcyon days "before the war."