Sketches in the East and West i-j:^ 



The early dinner was another amiable fraud. 

 The host would have been robbed of his day if 

 we had not been ready to sit for two hours and 

 give him all the county-seat gossip of politics and 

 the bodily complaints of leading citizens. His 

 judgeship had been of the Orphan's Court — the 

 Maryland probate court. After the old landown- 

 ing fashion, he had not been trained for a profes- 

 sion, and had done little but manage his not too 

 large property and read political speeches. In 

 his lonely age, slaves gone and corn prices low, 

 he was too much attached to the land to sell, and 

 too proud to move to town with his few hundreds 

 of cash income. He believed none the less 

 stoutly in his position and its various duties, — 

 hospitality, church, and politics the chief. The 

 period had many such pictures of dignity and 

 pathos, as the old order lingered in the new. 



First, of course, we must range up to the side- 

 board and take brandy and sugar, the brandy of 

 his own distilling ten years before. Then the 

 dinner — enough for ten. The judge's two hours 

 went rapidly. All three of us were related to 

 two-thirds of the " known " people of the county 

 and to each other. There was no waiting for 

 topics. But the old gentleman knew his obliga- 

 tion to a hair. 



"Well, well. I'm keepin' you from your gun- 

 nin' and it will be dark before you get to shootin' 



