The life was gay. In addition to the perpetual round of ordinary entertainment, there was always on hand or in prospect some more formal festivity,--a club meeting, a fox-hunt, a party, a tournament, a wedding. Little excuse was needed to bring people together where every one was social, and where the great honor was to be the host. Scientific horse-racing was confined to the regular race-tracks, where the races were not dashes, but four-mile heats which tested speed and bottom alike. But good blood was common, and even a ride with a girl in an afternoon meant generally a dash along the level through the woods, where, truth to tell, Miss Atalanta was very apt to win. Occasionally there was even a dash from the church. The high-swung carriages, having received their precious loads of lily-fingered, pink-faced, laughing girls with teeth like pearls and eyes like stars, helped in by young men who would have thrown not only their cloaks but their hearts into the mud to keep those dainty feet from being soiled, would go ahead; and then, the restive saddle-horses being untied from the swinging limbs, the young gallants would mount, and, by an instinctive common impulse, starting all together, would make a dash to the first hill, on top of which the dust still lingered, a golden nimbus thrown from the wheels that rolled their goddesses.
[Illustration: _The Lady and the Ox-Cart._]
The chief sport, however, was fox-hunting. It was, in season, almost universal. Who that lived in that time does not remember the fox-hunts,--the eager chase after “grays” or “old reds”! The grays furnished more fun, the reds more excitement. The grays did not run so far, but usually kept near home, going in a circuit of six or eight miles. “An old red,” generally so called irrespective of age, as a tribute to his prowess, might lead the dogs all day, and end by losing them as evening fell, after taking them a dead stretch for thirty miles. The capture of a gray was what men boasted of; a chase after “an old red” was what they “yarned” about. Some old reds became historical characters, and were as well known and as much discussed in the counties they inhabited as the leaders of the bar or the crack speakers of the circuit. The wiles and guiles of each veteran were the pride of his neighbors and hunters. Many of them had names. Gentlemen discussed them at their club dinners; lawyers told stories about them in the “Lawyers’ Rooms” at the court-houses; young men, while they waited for the preacher to get well into the service before going into church, bragged about them in the churchyards on Sundays. There was one such that I remember: he was known as “Nat Turner,” after the notorious leader of “Nat Turner’s Rebellion,” who remained in hiding for weeks after all his followers were taken.