388 SUNDRY JOURNEYS AND EXPERIENCES -I 



ner.&quot; To which I said, &quot; Of course we shall. 1 &quot;No,&quot; 

 said she, &quot;not of course, for when I awoke this morn 

 ing there was nothing for dinner in the house, and no 

 prospect of anything in the village ; but, taking my walk, 

 I met a negro with a magnificent wild turkey which he had 

 just shot, and that we will have.&quot; Just before dinner, 

 our hostess and I walked out into the orange orchard 

 and there picked from the trees a large market-basket 

 full of the most beautiful oranges ever seen, large, 

 sweet, and juicy; and these, embedded deftly by her in 

 a great mass of rich green leaves, glorified the table 

 during the discussion of the turkey, and became our des 

 sert. Never was there a more sumptuous dinner, and 

 never better talk. Mrs. Stowe was at her best, and the 

 Doctor abounded in quaint citations from French mem 

 oirs, of which he was an indefatigable reader. 



On the way North I stopped again at Charleston, vis 

 iting Drayton Hall, a fine old mansion dating from 

 1740, but never completed, surrounded by beautiful gar 

 dens filled with great azaleas in full bloom, the most gor 

 geous I have ever seen in any part of the world; but a 

 cloud seemed to rise over it all when we were told that, 

 except in winter, remaining on the island was for white 

 people certain death. In all this journey through the 

 South I added much to my library regarding Secession 

 and the Civil War ; accumulating newspapers, tracts, and 

 books which became the nucleus of the large Civil War 

 collection at Cornell. Then, too, there were talks with 

 people on the train and in the hotels, sometimes profit 

 able and sometimes amusing. As to the feeling between 

 the whites and the negroes, a former master said to me, 

 &quot;My old niggers will do anything I wish except cast 

 their ballots for me ; they will give me anything they have 

 in this world except their votes ; they would starve them 

 selves for me, but they won t vote for me. Among myr 

 iads of stories I heard one which seemed to argue more 

 philosophic power in the negro than many suppose him 

 to possess. A young planter at one of the Southern 



