26 HOME-MADE SOAP. [CHAP. XXI. 



When the governor s wife paid us a second visit, our landlady 

 made herself one of the party just as if we were all visitors at 

 her house. She was very much amused at my wife s muff, hav 

 ing never seen one since she was a girl, half a century before, at 

 Baltimore, yet the weather was now cold enough to make such 

 an article of dress most comfortable. Among other inquiries, she 

 said to my wife, &quot; Do tell me how you make your soap in En 

 gland.&quot; Great was her surprise to hear that ladies in that coun 

 try were in the habit of buying the article in shops, and would 

 be much puzzled if called upon to manufacture it for themselves. 

 As it was evident she had never studied Adam Smith on the Di 

 vision of Labor, she looked upon this fine-lady system of purchas 

 ing every article at retail stores, as very extravagant. &quot; That s- 

 the way they do in the north,&quot; said she, &quot; though I never could 

 understand where all their money comes from.&quot; She then ex 

 plained how economically she was able to supply herself with 

 soap. &quot; First, there is the wood, which costs nothing but the 

 trouble of felling the trees ; and, after it has served for fuel, it 

 yields the ashes, from which we get the potash. This is mixed 

 with the fat of sixty hogs, which costs nothing, for what else 

 could I do with all this fat at killing time ? As for the labor, it 

 is all done by my own people. I have nine maids, and they 

 make almost every thing in the house, even to the caps I wear.&quot; 

 Touching the soap, she observed, we must be careful to select the 

 ashes of the oak, hickory, ash, and other hard wood, for the pines 

 yield no potash ; a remark which led me to speculate on the lux 

 uriant growth of the long-leaved pines in the purely siliceous ter 

 tiary soils, from which it would have been difficult to conceive 

 how the roots of the trees could extract any alkaline matter, 

 whereas the soil of the &quot; hickory grounds&quot; is derived from the 

 disintegration of granitic rocks, which are very felspathic here, 

 and are decomposing in situ. 



Having occasion to hire a horse, I found that the proprietor 

 of the livery stables was a colored man, who came himself to 

 bargain about the price, which was high compared to that asked 

 in the north. 



The site of Milledgeville is 577 feet above the level of the 



