OR, THE WORLD HAS CHANGED. 75 



the wisest, the purest of all, was lost to his country ; and I 

 cannot help but believe that could he have lived untill our 

 trouble, we would have come out of it better than wo did. 



I remember once that as father and I were riding over to 

 Pendleton, passing the Fort Hill big gate, we discovered Mr. 

 Calhoun and his negroes fighting fire in the woods. We got 

 out of our buggy and assisted in putting out the fire and sav- 

 ing the fencing. 



When the Senator would return from Washington, my 

 father and other neighbors would visit him frequently, being- 

 received at his library, a cosy little house out in the yard under 

 the shade of several venerable oaks, where they would discuss 

 the state of the country, agricultural, and other topics of the 

 day. 



I once encountered a most embarrassing position at the Fort 

 Hill dinner table ; had been out hunting with the boys and 

 returned to dine with them. Mr. and Mrs. Calhoun were 

 seated at either end of the long dining table and I was placed 

 right between two very elegantly dressed young ladies (sup- 

 pose everybody has some peculiar weakness, and somehow, 

 elegantly dressed young ladies, with long trains, always had a 

 paraly^zing effect upon my mental system), my embarrass- 

 ment increasing with the closer contact. I was feeling exceed- 

 ingly awkward and cramped on this occasion, when to increase 

 my discomfiture, my friend, Willie Calhoun, requested me to 

 carve a roast duck just in my front. I picked up the carver 

 and fork and made an awkward lunge at the fowl, when it 

 skipped clean out of the dish, landing plump into Miss Martha 

 Calhoun's lap. It was an awful affair, and my first impulse 

 was to fly, but I dared not attempt it, for those long, mysterious 

 silken trains were coiled all around about my feet, and I feared 



