METHODS OF CULTURE TV THE SOUTH. 1 55 



there. I have therefore selected for description a plantation 

 at Norfolk, since this city is the centre of the largest trade, 

 and nearly midway in the Atlantic strawberry belt. I am 

 also led to make this choice because here is to be found, I 

 believe, the largest strawberry farm in the world, and its 

 varied labors illustrate most of the Southern aspects of the 

 question. 



The reader may imagine himself joining our Httle party 

 on a lovely afternoon about the middle of May. We took 

 one of the fine, stanch steamers of the Old Dominion line 

 at three p. m., and soon were enjoying, with a pleasure that 

 never palls, the sail from the city to the sea. Our artistic 

 leader, whose eye and taste were to illumine and cast a 

 glamour over my otherwise matter-of-fact text, was all aglow 

 with the varied beauties of the scene, and he faced the pros- 

 pect beyond the "■ Hook " with no more misgivings than if 

 it were a " painted ocean." But there are occasions when 

 the most heroic courage is of no avail. 



Only in the peace and beauty that crowned the closing 

 hours of the day as we steamed past Fortress Monroe and 

 up the EUzabeth river, did the prosaic fade out of the hours 

 just past, and now before us was the " sunny South " and 

 strawberries and cream. 



In the night there was a steady downfall of rain, but sun- 

 shine came with the morning, and we found that the spring 

 we had left at the North was summer here, and saw that the 

 season was moving forward with quickened and elastic tread. 

 Before the day grew warm we started from our hotel at 

 Norfolk for the strawberry plantation, rattling and bouncing 

 past comfortable and substantial homes, over a pavement 

 that surpassed even the ups and downs of fortune. Here 

 and there, surrounded by a high brick wall, would be seen 

 a fine old mansion, embowered in a wealth of shrubbery and 



