ALABAMA. 



125 



>t, late in the afternoon, arrived at Dallas, where he was 

 tospitably welcomed by the family of Judge Saffold, 

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

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

 lodesty and courtesy, had been at college, and had 

 earned the rudiments of Greek. 



At Dallas Philip Gosse spent several agreeable days while 

 irrangements were being made for his school to be opened, 

 'his house was large, but rudely built, and furnished with 

 m elegance which contrasted with its rough architecture. In 



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

 •esidences of wealthy planters at the time. What more par- 

 :icularly struck Philip Gosse was the gorgeous furniture 

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

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

 ;ide, which ran through the house, was completely em- 

 >owered with the lovely Southern creepers ; the twisted 

 :ables of Glycine fnitescens flung their heavy branches of lilac 

 )lossom about the walls, and wherever space was left 

 it was filled with more delicate forms of profuse bloom, 



ith the long pendulous trumpets of the scarlet cypress- 

 r ine 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 

 ^reat hawkmoths hung all through the twilight, waving 

 :heir 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 

 :ool 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 

 against the wall, at an angle of forty-five degrees, the feet 



