ALABAMA. 125 



last, late in the afternoon, arrived at Dallas, where he was 

 hospitably welcomed by the family of Judge Saffold, 

 and in particular by his son, Reuben Saffold, junior, who 

 was to be his pupil. This youth, who was of a charming 

 modesty and courtesy, had been at college, and had 

 learned the rudiments of Greek. 



At Dallas Philip Gosse spent several agreeable days while 

 arrangements were being made for his school to be opened. 

 This house was large, but rudely built, and furnished with 

 an elegance which contrasted with its rough architecture. In 

 this respect, no doubt, it was not distinguished from other 

 residences of wealthy planters at the time. What more par- 

 ticularly struck Philip Gosse was the gorgeous furniture 

 which Nature itself, in the rich June weather, had provided 

 for the front of it. The wide passage, with rooms on either 

 side, which ran through the house, was completely em- 

 bowered with the lovely Southern creepers ; the twisted 

 cables of Glyciite friitescens flung their heavy branches of lilac 

 blossom about the walls, and wherever space was left 

 it was filled with more delicate forms of profuse bloom, 

 with the long pendulous trumpets of the scarlet cypress- 

 vine and of the intensely crimson quamoclit, sweet-briar 

 that made the hot air ache with perfume, and deep 

 Vermillion tubes of the Southern honeysuckle, in which 

 great hawkmoths hung all through the twilight, waving 

 their loud-humming fans, and gorging themselves on 

 sweetness. '' Here," he says, in a letter from Dallas, " par- 

 ticularly at the close of evening, when the sunbeams 

 twinkle obliquely through the transparent foliage, and the 

 cool breeze comes loaded with fragrance, the family may 

 usually be seen, each (ladies as well as gentlemen) in that 

 very elegant position in which an American delights to sit, 

 the chair poised upon the two hind feet, or leaning back 

 ac^ainst the wall, at an angle of forty-five degrees, the feet 



