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Dear Sir,—A residence on a large plantation is to
a Northerner rich with subjects of interest. Every
thing is so different from what he has been accustomed
to, his curiosity is continually excited by the novelties
which are brought before him, or which he is running
his face against. First, there is the slave himself, his
condition, his cabin, his dress, his manners, his labors,
his amusements, his religion, his domestic relations; then
there is the plantation, with fences a mile apart, presenting
in one broad enclosure land enough to make a score
of Yankee pastures; then there is the cotton-plant, with
its rich, pure, white, fleecy treasures, hanging to the gathering
hand; then there is the tobacco-plant, with its
beautiful, tender, green leaf in spring, and its broad,
palmetto-looking leaf in autumn, green lined with brown;
then there is the cotton-gin, with the negroes at work in
it, the snowy cotton flying from the wind-fans in fleecy
showers that mock a December snow-storm! then there
is the baling and screwing, the roping and marking with
planter's name, all objects of interest to witness; then
there is the planter himself, so different in his manners,
tastes, education, prejudices, notions, bearing, feelings,
and associations, from the New England man; then there
is his lady, accustomed to have slaves attend upon the

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glance of her eye from childhood, commanding and directing
her large domestic establishment, where the food,
clothing, comfort, and health sometimes of a hundred
slaves depend upon her managing care; then there is
the son, who is raised half-hunter, half-rustic, with as
much book learning as his pastimes in the field and wood
will allow him to turn his attention to—the idol of the
old negroes and the hope of the younger ones—who has
never seen a city, but may one day walk Broadway, or
Chestnut street, “a fine young Southern blood,” with a
fortune to spend, high-spirited, chivalrous, quick to resent
an insult, too proud to give one, ready to fight for
his lady-love or his country! prone to high living and
horse-racing, but at home courteous and hospitable as
becomes a true country gentleman; then there is the
daughter of the house, too, a lovely girl, with beautiful
hands, for she has never used them at harder work than
tuning her harp, (and hardly at this, if she can trust her
maid,) who rides like Di Vernon, is not afraid of a gun,
nor, eke! a pistol, is inclined to be indolent, loves to
write letters, to read the late poets, is in love with Byron,
sings Jenny Lind's songs with great taste and sweetness,
has taken her diploma at the Columbia Institute, or some
other conservatory of hot-house plants, knows enough
French to guess at it when she comes across it in an
English book, and of Italian to pronounce the names of
her opera songs! she has ma's carriage at her command
to go and come at her pleasure in the neighborhood, receives
long forenoon visits from young gentlemen who
come on horseback, flirts at evening promenades on the
piazza with others, and is married at sixteen without
being courted!

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The manners and customs thus enumerated are quite
different from those at the North. Let me describe some
of the more striking differences a little in detail. Who
ever sees an old gray-headed gentleman, mounted on
horseback, and a spirited horse at that, galloping along
the road with a cigar in his mouth, in New England?
Yet we never ride out that we don't meet one or more
gray-headed planters, booted and spurred,—sometimes
with a cloth cap on when the day is windy,—trotting to
or from town at a slapping pace; and followed by one
or more dogs. You might ride all over the state of
Connecticut or Massachusetts without seeing the like.
There they drive about in chaises, or buggies, or carryalls.
Where at the north would we meet elegant coaches
with plaited harness, and all the appointments rich and
complete, drawn by a pair of mules? Yet here it is an
every day occurrence to see them, for mules here are
highly esteemed. Where in the North would fashionable
ladies ride mules? Yet here it is by no means uncommon
for a handsome mule to be preferred, especially by timid
persons. To what rural church on the Sabbath would
every family come in its own carriage? Yet a private
carriage stands outside of our church for every family
in it.

The customs, too, are different in respect to the license
given to daughters. In the North the young lady is left
alone with her beaux, and pa and her ma retire. In the
South it is deemed indecorous for them to be left alone by
themselves, and the mother or some member of the family
is always in the room; and if none of these, a female slave
is seated on the rug at the door. This is a relic of the
Spanish duenna system. Young girls are kept in very

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strict bounds by mammas in this respect; and I was told by
a married gentleman, a few days since, that his wife never
took his arm till she took it to be led to church on her
wedding day; and that he never had an opportunity of
kissing her but twice while he was addressing her, (they
were six months engaged!) and in both cases by means
of a stratagem he resorted to of drugging a peach with
laudanum which he gave to the attending servant, and
thereby put her into a sound sleep. To this custom is
to be attributed so many runaway matches. If the girls
were confided in by their mothers, and suffered to see
and become acquainted with those who address them, they
would hardly elope. Freedom of intercourse would put
an end to these clandestine marriages. I like, of the
two customs, the Northern best; but both of them are
carried too near the extreme. I know several young
ladies in this vicinity who have told me that they were
never for two hours out of sight of their mammas.

This watchfulness, by and by, defeats its own aim.
The lover is piqued, and begins to regard the whole
matter as a fair field for strategy; and instead of looking
upon the mother of his future wife with respect and affection,
he beholds in her an enemy, whom it would be a
victory to circumvent. The daughter soon begins to look
at it in the same view, and away they fly together to
some Gretna Green.

But runaway matches seem to be marked with Divine
displeasure. I have never heard of a happy one. Not far
from us resides a widow lady, who eloped from an excellent
mother, when she was young, with a worthless young
man. She is now the mother of three grown daughters,
every one of which has eloped and left her, the youngest

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only last June, at fifteen years of age, and she is left
desolate and broken-hearted! Thus is the example of
the mother followed by the children; and whom can she
blame but herself? But the worst remains to be told.
The eldest has already been deserted by her husband, who
has gone to California, and she last week had to seek
shelter in the home of her childhood; the second daughter
is suing for a divorce, though she has not been thirteen
months married. Ah, girls! never in an evil hour
place your hand in that of the young man who would
counsel you to desert your paternal home! It is cruel
to deprive those who have nourished you, and with sweet
hope looked forward to the happy day of your honorable
marriage beneath their own roof; it is cruel to rob them
of the enjoyment of this happiness. It is their right to
give you to him who is the choice of your heart. It is
their blessed privilege to bless your union, and witness
your and your husband's joy. How can you then rob
them of their participation in that joyous bridal, towards
which they have been so many years looking forward?
Daughters who elope, wrest from their parents that
crowning joy of a father's and a mother's life—the gratification
of seeing their daughter married at their own
fireside! A bridal elsewhere is unnatural, and God's
blessing will not follow it.

There is a custom here of kissing when ladies meet,
that seems to me quite a waste of the “raw material,”
as some envious gentleman has remarked, doubtless some
bachelor editor. You might see in Boston the meeting
of one hundred pair of young ladies during the day, and
not seven couple would salute each other on the lips.
Yet in Tennessee all females kiss, old and young, even if

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they see each other as often as every day. I am acquainted
with a teacher of young ladies here, who says
that his scholars all kiss when they meet in the morning;
and he has seen them when they enter late, in going past
several girls to their seats, kiss every pair of lips they
pass en route. At church doors of a Sunday there is
quite a fusilade of this small arms. There is a warmth
of feeling, a heartiness of affection, a tenderness of
sympathy in the Southern ladies, that is the cause of all
this. The Northern ladies are cold, without question.
They are also better scholars where mere “book” is concerned.
They have more comprehensive minds, and are
more intellectually clever. Southern girls, from all accounts,
make but poor book students. They have, however,
so much imagination and feeling, that they converse
with brilliancy, appear well and under an indefinable
grace, peculiar to them, can veil every scholastic defect.

It is only when a lady takes up her pen that her real
deficiencies of education are perceptible. If I were
asked to judge of the acquirements of a young lady, I
would say, “Let me see one of her letters!” I know
a beautiful girl who confessed to Isabel the reason she did
not answer a letter that she wrote to her from the Springs
was, that “she did not know how to write a letter fit to
be seen!” The truth is, the young lady was always indulged
at home; went or staid from school at her will;
reached fourteen without being able to spell correctly;
was then mortified to have her defects made known to
her schoolmates, and refused to go to school longer.
Her father is the Honorable Mr. —, and she is exceedingly
beautiful and interesting, and now eighteen years
of age. The pen is all that will discover her deficiencies,

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and this she will probably never take in her hands!
Being brought up in a family of intelligent persons, she
talks well! Poor girl! what mortifications are before
her! If she is engaged to an intelligent man, and he
should address her a letter during an absence, what excuse
can she offer for not replying? If she marry him,
and he discover her imperfect education, how mortified
will he be! How humiliated she! Yet it is her own fault;
and scores of girls in this country are walking in the
same path.

Last night, we were seated in the drawing room, listening
to Mr. Sargeant's fine song to Jenny Lind, sung
by Isabel, and also set to music by her, when there was
a sudden commotion among two or three young ladies
present, and dodging, and screaming, and throwing handkerchiefs
over their heads! A bat was in the room!
Isabel was too much occupied to know it, and kept on
playing, while the velvet-winged bird of dusk darted in
elegant curves through the upper air of the room with
arrowy swiftness. It was almost impossible to follow his
gyrations with the eye. Two young gentlemen present
sat very stiffly as if they expected to be hit; and at last
the bat darted directly across the piece of music before
Isabel's eyes. In an instant she was in the middle of
the room, with a handkerchief thrown over her hair, and
uttering exclamations of slight terror. Here then were
four ladies with their heads picturesquely covered with
their lace kerchiefs, and two of the number hiding behind
chairs, and a third behind the harp.

“Bless me!” cried the colonel, “is it possible, girls,
you are afraid of this bat?”

“To be sure! Do call some one to drive it out!”

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At this moment a second bat made its entreé, and between
the two, I thought the girls would go wild. Isabel,
seeing her parasol, caught it, and opening it quickly
sat down under it upon a low stool, awaiting the issue.

“They are harmless!” cried the colonel. “They do
not fly in here to eat you, but mosquitoes, which they
feed on!”

“Oh, sir, they light upon the head,” said the pretty
brunette, behind the harp; “and if they once get in the
hair, it all has to be cut off before it can be detached
from it!”

“They have barbs all over their wings and claws,
colonel, indeed they have,” said a blue-eyed girl, who
was concealed under the piano cover;—“and if they—
ah-h-h!” she shrieked out, as one of the bats swept past
her forehead; and she quickly drew in her face, without
waiting to finish what she was saying.

“Where were you, Kate?” I hear you ask, Mr. Inquisitive.

I had been reading a story in the Knickerbocker
Magazine, before Bel commenced singing; and still held
the book on my lap; but I neither ran, screamed, nor
covered my head; for I had frequently received in my
room such twilight visitors, and at first was a little nervous,
as I had heard such terrible accounts of their
lodging in the hair, and never being got out till the hair
was cut off; but as I never take marvelous stories on
hearsay, I one evening, seeing that they did not harm
me, watched the motions of three bats that were together
disporting themselves in my chamber. I saw, after a
few minutes' observation, that their movements, instead
of being erratic and uncertain, and aimed to annoy me,

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were governed by some direct object in view. A little
closer scrutiny enabled me to see that they were in pursuit
of mosquitoes, which flew about the room, and that
every time they made a dart they caught one in their
mouse-shaped jaws. I was greatly relieved from personal
apprehension when I had achieved this discovery;
and I continued my writing as if they were not there,
and soon forgot their presence. At length, when I had
completed the letter I was writing to my midshipman
brother in the Mediterranean, I looked for my “birds,”
and found that they had quietly disappeared. Since
then I am a philosopher when a bat is in a room.

The young ladies, however, being convinced that bats
are animated combs flying about for a head to fasten in,
would not be persuaded of the innocency of their intentions.
The colonel, therefore, had to call in two or
three servants, to drive them out, with brooms, riding-whips,
and what not! But this only made the matter
worse. The poor things, interrupted in their mosquito
hawking, became terrified at these belligerent manifestations,
and sailed low to avoid the blows aimed at them
in the air. In these escapades they darted under the
piano, as a shriek from the blue-eyed hider testified; and
even beneath Isabel's parasol, as a sudden scream from
her bore witness. The girls were now in despair. The
colonel and I sat laughing and looking on. At length
it was resolved, as bats are said to follow lights, to take
the two astral lamps out upon the piazza. The drawing-room
was darkened in vain. It was the mosquitoes, not
the lamps, that attracted them, and, if any thing, the
idea of their flying about in there in the dark, only increased
the terror of the terrified girls. Stir out

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themselves the girls would not. The young gentlemen, in
the meanwhile, were using their hats to try and knock
the enemy down. Twice in the dark I felt the wind of
their noiseless wings upon my cheek. The lamps were
ordered back, and with a hard battle two of the enemy
were laid low, and the residue driven forth.

“Now,” said the colonel, after the girls had been
twelve times assured that the bats were hors du combat,
and incapable of acting as combs, either fine or coarse,
side comb or back comb, and holding up to the lamp one
of the dead mosquito hunters,—“I wish to convince
you that these delicately-winged animals are not after
you, and could do you no harm.”

Here he held up a bat to the light by its extended
wings. The sight of it made blue eyes crawl, and the
brunette utter an expression of detestation. It was both
ugly and pretty—its wings being transparent, and elegantly
constructed, and its body like that of an over-fed
mole. Its head was small, like a mouse's, and the
colonel, opening its jaws, showed its sharp teeth, and a
little pile of mosquitoes under its tongue. “You see
what its food is!” he said. “The teeth are sharp, but
the mouth is so small it couldn't bite even a child's finger.
Now look at its claws. They are sharp and curved, to
cling by; but the curve instead of being barbed, is a half
circle; and whatever the claw grasps can easily be released
from it.”

“But its wings. Look at the horrid thing's wings!”
exclaimed blue eyes.

“Well, let us examine its wings,” said the colonel
smiling. “You see that each angle where the joints
articulate, is defended by a small hook—one on each

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wing. These hooks are but the curve of three quarters
of a circle; and if a bat should light upon any one of
your heads, and hang there by these two hooks, he could
easily be disengaged without sacrificing one silken strand
thereof. Let me try it, Bel!”

But Isabel fled, and so did the rest. A negro boy's
wooly caput being at hand, the colonel placed the bat
upon his crispy poll, and having made the wings take
their strongest hold, he showed us how easily the hold
could be removed, even from such tangled locks. “The
use of these hooks,” he added, “is for the bats to hang
to each other by in winter, when they swarm together
like a cluster of bees, and in huge masses, many feet
in circumference, remain in torpid suspension until
spring.”

The young ladies at length professed themselves satisfied,
and the colonel made each one pledge herself never
to run from a bat, or cover her head again if a bat came
into the room.

Mr. Sargeant's beautiful and patriotic song was then
resumed and finished, and many others, and the evening,
which had been so ludicrously interrupted, passed off
without further incidents.

p613-238

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