Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. III.djvu/313

Rh and I drank together a toast, “friendship and potatoes,” as the chief indispensables of earthly happiness. After this we proceeded to Savannah.

I saw in Savannah, besides good old friends—always good and kind—a seaman's home under the management of the ladies of the city. It was a simple, but well-ordered and successful institution, where the sailors, while in port at Savannah, may obtain, at the lowest possible charges, the best possible comforts in a large common hall, both food for the body and food for the soul—this latter consisting of good books and small tracts, containing treatises and narratives of a religious tendency. The lively, agreeable lady who conducted me thither, Mrs. B., the daughter of Judge Berrian,—is one of the directresses, and although a happy wife as well as mother of six boys and one girl, she finds time and heart to look after this home for the sons of Neptune, otherwise left to winds and waves more dangerous to them in the city than those out at sea. Wife, mother, citizen are the titles of the woman of the New World.

In the evening at the hotel, Pulaski-house, where I took up my quarters during the short time of my stay, that I might not be separated from Mrs. W. H., I made the acquaintance of a young lady, a planter, now come to the city with a family of seven boys all in succession, with but one or at the most, two years between them. Both mother and children were full of the fresh spirit of life, the gay young mother's only anxiety being to keep the merry lads from running about in the city, as they were accustomed to do in the country. They were going to be placed in a school here.

Families in North America are very large, although not so large as in England. The largest family I heard spoken of here was twelve children by one father and mother, but this was considered unusual; seven seems to be, in a general way, the largest number of children in a family.