THE SOUVENIR; OR, THE ARRIVAL OF THE "LADY'S BOOK."
"You may train the eagle To stoop to your fist, Or you may inveigle The Phœnix of the East; The lioness, you may move her To give up her prey; But you'll ne'er stop a lover, He will find out the way."--_Old Song._
A SOUTHERN plantation lying, as so many of them do, at some distance from any town or village, presents a phase of life peculiar to itself, and very singular to one unaccustomed to it from childhood. It has not the loneliness of isolation, for each planter's house is in its way a sort of a palace, the residence of the superior authority, while at a little distance are clustered together the cabins of his retainers, sometimes in such numbers as to form almost a little village of their own. Yet the members of the family are often separated for weeks or months from all congenial companionship, excepting what they can find in each other; for, besides the distance, the state of the roads is often an insuperable obstacle to all intercourse with their far-off neighbors. Eminently social as Southerners usually are, this is no slight drawback to their enjoyment, and the arrival of the post is looked forward to as the one great weekly event to relieve the monotony of "the leaden-footed hours."
Bessie Egerton was in this respect more fortunate than many of her companions, her father's plantation being but about five miles from the village of Oxford, in South Carolina. This was only a pleasant ride when the roads were good; but there were weeks during the winter and early spring when even Bessie Egerton, general belle and favorite as she was throughout the surrounding country, had nothing but the mails to remind her that there were other interests and more stirring events in the world than those of which her home was the centre.
Mr. Egerton was not one of those wealthy planters whose income rivals that of the merchant princes of the North, and would be a pretty fortune for a person of moderate wants; but he was in comfortable circumstances, and Bessie's home was a very pleasant one. The house stood on a gentle slope, and with its wide verandas covered with roses, jessamine, and honey suckles, and overhung by live-oak trees, from whose gnarled branches hung drooping long fringes of the gray moss, giving them the venerable appearance of age, it suggested ideas of coolness and shade, the peculiar comforts of that part of the country.