Page:Memorials of a Southern Planter.djvu/262

 252 servants when be owned them, but he bad small patience for the shiftless, lazy ways of the negro race after they were set free. Very few of his own remained on the plantation. Many had gone off when he was absent with his family in Mobile and Macon, and a large number had been left in Montgomery when the war ended. Tenants were brought in from other plantations, but they were more fond of barbecues and big meetings and hunting and fishing than of keeping the grass out of the fields. It became so onerous to Thomas to look after plantation affairs conducted in such a manner, that he decided to turn over the management to his son Edward.

He longed to visit a tide-water country, and it was arranged that he should spend a part of nearly every summer at Pass Christian with his kind friends down there. He was now too old to hunt. Some of the following letters show his keen enjoyment of fishing.

, 4th August, 1870.

. . . "Mr.——enacted a droll scene, or one that would have been droll had it not been so discreditable. He was very drunk, but he managed to get into his little wagon and started for home. Meeting two ladies on the way to whom he wished to pay distinguished attention, he uncovered with the 'grand flourish,' and bowed so profoundly that be bowed himself clean out of the wagon, head down, and had it not been for the prompt seizure of the horse by the head by one of the ladies, whilst the other was engaged in disentangling and disengaging; Mr.——'s leggs from the reins, Mr.—— would probably have been gathered to his fathers!

"I do not allow plantation affairs to obtrude themselves upon my thoughts. This I intend as a period of rest, mentally as well as physically. I expect to hear from Tom to-morrow, and bope to hear that Sophy and Fify and Lelia reached home on the 28th, as expected.

"This is no very good place to write letters at, as I cannot very well do it in the morning, on account of fishing and getting back from fishing, and then bathing,