Swallow Barn: Or A Sojourn in the Old Dominion

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G.P. Putnam, 1852 - Plantation life - 506 pages
 

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Page 8 - The mellow, bland, and sunny luxuriance of her old-time society — its good fellowship, its hearty and constitutional companionableness, the thriftless gayety of the people, their dogged but amiable invincibility of opinion, and that overflowing hospitality which knew no ebb...
Page 27 - ... clan of Meriwethers. The main building is more than a century old. It is built with thick brick walls, but one story in height, and surmounted by a double-faced or hipped roof, which gives the idea of a ship bottom upwards. Later buildings have been added to this, as the wants or ambition of the family have expanded. These are all constructed of wood, and seem to have been built in defiance of all laws of congruity, just as convenience required. But they form altogether an agreeable picture of...
Page 450 - I have had, therefore, rather a special interest in observing them. The contrast between my preconceptions of their condition and the reality which I have witnessed, has brought me a most agreeable surprise. I will not say that, in a high state of cultivation...
Page 30 - ... cows, who sustain an imperturbable companionship with a sickly wagon, whose parched tongue and drooping swingletrees, as it stands in the sun, give it a most forlorn and invalid character; whilst some sociable carts under the sheds, with their shafts perched against the walls, suggest the idea of a set of gossiping cronies taking their ease in a tavern porch. Now and then a clownish hobble-de-hoy colt, with long fetlocks and disordered mane, and a thousand burs in his tail, stalks through this...
Page 258 - Then, I take it, Hafen, you do not thrive much in the world," I remarked. " Ah, sir," replied Hafen, still holding the flask in his hand, and beginning to moralize, " it is a great help to a man's conscience to know that he earns his bread lawfully : a poor man's honesty is as good as a rich man's gold. I am a hobbling sort of person, and no better than I ought to be, but I never saw any good come out of deceit. Virtue is its own reward, as the parson says ; and away goes the devil when he finds...
Page 326 - A bevy of domesties, in every stage of training, attended upon the table, presenting a lively type of the progress of civilization, or the march of intellect ; the veteran waitingman being well-contrasted with the rude half-monkey, half-boy, who seemed to have been for the first time admitted to the parlor...
Page 36 - ... hardihood, for a whole evening, bandying interjections, and making bows, and saying shrewd things, with all the courtesy imaginable. But, for unextinguishable pertinacity in argument, and utter impregnability of belief, there is no disputant like your country gentleman who reads the newspapers. When one of these discussions fairly gets under weigh, it never comes to an anchor again of its own accord : it is either blown out so far to sea as to be given up for lost, or puts into port in distress,...
Page 30 - ... filled with fodder. This is the customary lounge of half a score of oxen and as many cows, who sustain an imperturbable companionship with a sickly wagon, whose parched tongue and drooping swingle-trees, as it stands in the sun, give it a most forlorn and invalid character; whilst some sociable carts under the sheds, with their shafts perched against the walls, suggest the idea of a set of gossiping cronies taking their ease in a tavern porch. Now and then a clownish hobble-de-hoy colt, with...
Page 33 - ... republicanism, I am told he keeps the peace as if he commanded a garrison, and administers justice like a Cadi. He has some claim to supremacy in this last department; for during three years...
Page 499 - And though that he was worthy he was wise, And of his port as meke as is a mayde. He never yet no vilanie ne sayde In alle his lif, unto no manere wight. He was a veray parfit gentil knight.

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