Rows and rows of white-washed cottages constituted the "quarters," with narrow streets between them, many of the little homes adorned with bright-hued, old-fashioned flowers in the front yards, or with potato and melon patches.

On cold winter evenings bright firelight shone from every door and window. Inside, the father sitting in the chimney corner, smoking his pipe while he deftly wove white-oak splints into cotton baskets; the mother, mending, or knitting, while the fat little darkies tumbled about on the floor, or danced to the music of Uncle Tom's fiddle.

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The slaves were well fed, well clothed, well housed, and when ill they were well nursed, and attended by a good doctor.

Their houses were warmed by fires in broad fireplaces, fires which they kept burning all night.

They had gay "Sunday-go-to-meetin' clothes," and they generally went to church, either to the "white folkses' church," where an upper gallery was provided for them, or to their own special service.

If a planter allowed his slaves to be mistreated in any way, he and his family were ostracized from society, and made to feel the disapprobation of their neighbors. So general was this method of administering rebuke that it seemed to be an unwritten law throughout the South.

Sometimes, as it often happens to-day,[63] an overseer of quick or ungovernable temper would be severe in punishing an offender; but he soon lost his place and a kinder man was employed in his instead.

Somewhere in the "quarters" a large nursery was situated, and there the babies and small children were cared for by the old women while their mothers worked in the cotton-fields.

White children were taught to treat the grown-up servants with respect, and as they could not say "Mrs." or "Mr.," they called them "aunt" or "uncle." On Sunday afternoons the white childr............