The sages of the bank parlors and the counting-rooms would shake their heads at such spendthrifts as these, refuse to discount their paper, and confidently predict that by no possibility could they come to good.

They had their defects, no doubt, these planters and farmers of Virginia.

The life they led was strongly developed on the animal side, and was perhaps neither stimulating nor elevating.

The living was the reverse of plain, and the thinking was neither extremely high nor notably laborious.

Yet in this very particular there is something rather restful and pleasant to the eye wearied by the sight of incessant movement, and to the ear deafened by the continual shout that nothing is good that does not change, and that all change must be good.