;--and the
world may be confidently challenged to furnish the equal to such a
breakfast, as it is cooked in the South.
We stayed several days at Mason's; and after all these years the memory
of the dullness, the stillness and lifelessness of that slumberous
farm-house still oppresses my spirit as with a sense of the presence of
death and mourning. There was nothing to do, nothing to think about;
there was no interest in life. The male part of the household were away
in the fields all day, the women were busy and out of our sight; there
was no sound but the plaintive wailing of a spinning-wheel, forever
moaning out from some distant room--the most lonesome sound in nature, a
sound steeped and sodden with homesickness and the emptiness of life.
The family went to bed about dark every night, and as we were not invited
to intrude any new customs, we naturally followed theirs. Those nights
were a hundred years long to youths accustomed to being up till twelve.
We lay awake and miserable till that hour every time, and grew old and
decrepit waiting through the still eternities for the clock-strikes.
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