Before the civil war our Southern civilization was divided into two classes—the aristocracy and the common people. The aristocrats were generally slave-holders, and though they were only one-seventh of the voting population, they dominated the other six-sevenths politically, socially, and financially. And yet there was no friction. The common people were loyal to their wealthy and educated leaders. They voted for them and fought for them. They elected them to our highest offices. These aristocrats were our governors,.judges, and members of Congress, our civil and military office-holders. And they were shining lights in the councils of the nation. The common people were allowed to be magistrates, constables and non-commissioned officers in the militia. They served on the petit juries and worked the public roads. Their loyalty to the aristocracy was beautiful. They shouted for Toombs and Stephens, and Colquitt and Cobb, with a wild hurrah, and when the war came they fought for their principles just like our forefathers fought who resisted a tax on tea when not one in a thousand drank it. Out of a com, pany of eighty-four men who went from Murray county, not one was a slave-holder. The aristocracy was mainly an aristocracy of dominion. This kind of aristocracy brings with it culture and pride and dignity of bearing. The scriptures always mention the number of servants when speaking of the old patriarchs' consequence in the land. "I am a man having authority," said the Centurion. "I say unto this man, go, and he goeth, and to another, come, and he cometh." Dominion is the pride of man—dominion over something. A negro is proud if he owns a "possum"'dog. A poor man is proud if he owns a horse and a cow and some razor-back hogs. His neighbor is proud if he owns a good horse and a top buggy and some bottom land and can take the lead in his country church or his county politics. The big boy loves dominion over his little brother, and the father takes it over all—well, not always, for there are some wives who have a sweet and silent control over their husbands; I speak from experience. Bob Toombs once remarked,'' That the dominion of a good wife over her husband was his surest safeguard" against the temptations of life. Toombs was a very great and noble man, and the most beautiful trait of his character was his loyalty and devotion to his wife.

But the Anglo-Saxon race glories in owning men, and it makes but little difference whether the men are their dependants or their slaves; the glory is all the same if they have got them in their power. Wealthy corporations, railroad kings, princely planters, have dominion over their employees and they control them at their pleasure. It is not a dominion in law, hut it is almost absolute in fact, and there is nothing wrong about it when it is humanely exercised; indeed, it is a very agreeable relation between the poor laborer and the rich employer. An humble, poor man loves to lean upon a generous landlord, and the landlord is proud of the poor man's homage. I asked Bill A. once how he was going to vote, and he said he couldn't tell me until he saw Colonel Johnson. But the dominion of the old aristocracy of the South was not over their own race. It was over another, and it gradually grew into an oligarchy of slave-owners, and the poorer whites were kept under the ban. There was a line of social caste between them, and it was widening into a gulf, for the poor white man could not compete with slave labor any more than the farmer or the mechanic can now compete with convict labor. But, at the same time, this kind of slave aristocracy gave dignity and leisure to the rich, and Solomon says: "In leisure there is wisdom;" and so these men became our law-makers and jurists, and they were shining lights in the councils of the nation. But, my friends, it was an aristocracy that was exclusive, and it overshadowed the masses of the people like a broad spreading oak overshadows and withers the undergrowth beneath it. The results of the war wiped out this distinction between the aristocrat and the common people. But there are still left two classes—those who have seen better days, and those who haven't. The first class used to ride or drive, but most of them now take it afoot or stay at home. Seventy-five per cent, of them are descendants of old Henry Clay Whigs. Forty and fifty years ago they were the patrons of high schools and colleges, and stocked the professions with an annual crop of high-strung graduates who swore by Henry Clay and Fillmore and Stephens and Toombs and John Bell and the Code of Honor. They were proud of their birth and lineage, their wealth and culture; and when party spirit ran high and fierce they banded together against the pretensions of the struggling democracy. When I was a young man, a Whig girl deemed it an act of condescension to go to a party with a Democrat boy. But the wear and tear of the war, the loss of their slaves,, and a mortgage or two to lift, broke most of these old families up, though it didn't break down their family pride. They couldn't stand it like the Democrats who lived in log cabins and wore wool hats and copperas breeches. I speak with freedom of the old Georgia democracy, for I was one of them. The wealth and refinement of the State was, in the main, centered in the party known as the Old Line Whigs. Out of one hundred and sixty students in our State University at Athens, fifty-five years ago, one hundred and thirty of them were the sons of Whigs. I felt politically lonesome in their society, and was just going to change my base when I fell in love with a little Whig angel who was flying around. This hurried me up, and I was just about to go over to the Whig party, when suddenly that party came over to me. I don't know yet whether that political somersault lifted me up or pulled the little angel down—but I do know she wouldn't have me, and at last I mated with a Democratic darling who had either more pity or less discrimination. She took me, and she's got me yet; she surrendered, but I am the prisoner.

So I did not marry my first love, but Mrs. Arp married her's—bless her heart—and she now declares I took advantage of her innocent youth and gave her no chance to make a choice among lovers. That is so, I reckon, for I was in a powerful hurry to secure the prize, and pressed my suit with all diligence for fear of accidents. Once before I had loved and lost, and I thought it would have killed me; but it didn't, for I never sprung from suicide stock. I had loved that little maid of Athens amazingly. I would have climbed the Chimborazo mountains and fought a tiger for her—a small tiger. And she loved me, I know, for the evening before I left for my distant home I told her of my love and devotion, my adoration and aspiration and admiration and all other '' ations,'' and the palpitating lace on her bosom told me how fast her heart was beating, and I gently took her soft hand in mine and drew her head upon my manly shoulder and kissed her. Delicious feast—delightful memory. It lasted me a year, I know, and has not entirely faded yet. I never mention it at home—no, never; but I think of it sometimes on the sly—yes, on the sly. Before I left her for my distant home she promised tO to consider my love and write to me—but she never wrote. She is considering it yet, I reckon. In a year or so she married another college boy and was happy, and not long after I married Mrs. Arp, and was happy, too. So it is all right and no loss on our side.

I still love to ruminate about those delightful days —the memories of love's young dream. And why not? Four thousand years ago Jacob kissed Rachel, and Moses made a record of it in the sacred volume, and it has come down to us through the corridors of time, and is still the sweetest part of the story. To be mated as well as married is the happiest condition of human life. What a beautiful sight it is to see a venerable couple with loving children and grandchildren around them, and going down the vale like John Anderson my Jo John and his loving spouse. It seems to me that marriages in those days, half a century ago, were more serious than now. I will not say there was more love, but I know there were less clothes and fewer divorces and grass widows. The boys married the girls and the girls married the boys. But now it is not uncommon to see our old widowers following General Longstreet's example, and taking the girls for wives. It is not according to nature and is dangerous to both, especially if the old man refuses to die in a reasonable time and fails to leave the blooming widow a goodly sum. I recall now a beautiful Gwinnett girl, the daughter of a friend of ours. The civil war wrecked her father's fortune and he died soon after, leaving her almost penniless. When she was twenty years old she wedded a rich old man of fifty—an invalid, whose lease on life seemed short —and he settled on her an ample fortune to be hers at his death. Now she is fifty years old and he is eighty, and keeps living on and on and on. They are childless, and live on a farm in the country, and she looks almost as old and haggard as he does. Hers is the wreck of a once happy and hopeful life.

Now, before the civil war, our young men almost invariably mated with our young girls, and our widowers married widows as a general rule, unless there was a Yankee school mistress in sight. They always married Southern widowers and were glad to get them. Four New England girls went off that way in my town, and they made good wives and good mothers. They were raised to habits of industry and economy, and that is what a widower wants in a second wife. They take good care of his first crop of children and get them educated and out of the way by the time a second crop is coming on. There was no economy in ante-bellum days among the aristocracy of the South. It wasn't necessary. The little negroes were always standing around waiting for the scraps, either of food or clothing. Whereas, in New England, where I went to school one winter, they didn't even keep a dog or a cat at my uncle's house, and the rule was to take no more on your plate than you were going to cat, and the dishes and the plates were left so clean after meals that it was hardly necessary to wash them—and maybe they didn't.

Most of these families are poor, but they are proud. They are highly respected for their manners and their culture. They are looked upon as good stock and thoroughbred, but withdrawn from the turf. Their daughters carry a high head and a flashing eye, stand up square on their pastern joints, and chafe under the bits. They come just as nigh living as they used to as possible. They dress neatly in plain clothes, wear starched collars and corsets, and a perfumed handkerchief. They do up their hair in the fashion, take Godey's Lady's Book or somebody's Bazaar. If they are able to hire a domestic, the darkey finds out in two minutes that free niggers don't rank any higher in that family than slaves used to. The negroes who know their antecedents' have the highest respect for them, and will say Mas' William or Miss Julia with the same deference as in former days. One would hardly learn from their general deportment that they cleaned up the house, made up the beds, washed the dishes, did their own sewing and gave music lessons—in fact, did most everything but wash the family clothes. They won't do that. I have known them to milk and churn, and sweep the back yard, and scour the brass; but I've never seen one of them bent over the wash-tub yet. In the good old times their rich and patriarchal father lived like Abraham, and Jacob, and Job. They felt like they were running an unlimited monarchy on a limited scale. When a white child was born in the family it was ten dollars out of pocket; but a little nigger was a hundred dollars in and got fifty dollars a year better for twenty years to come.

The economy of the old plantation was the economy of waste. Two servants to one white person was considered moderate and reasonable. In a family ,of eight or ten—with numerous visitors and some poor kin—there was generally a head cook and her assistant, a chambermaid, a seamstress, a maid or nurse for every daughter, and a little nig for every son, whose business it was to trot around after him and hunt up mischief. Then there was the stableman and carriage driver,, and the gardener and the dairy woman, and two little darkies to drive up the cows and keep the calves off while the milking was going on. Besides these, there were generally half a dozen little chaps crawling around or picking up chips, and you could hear them bawling and squalling all the day long, as their mothers mauled them and spanked them for something or for nothing with equal ferocity.

But the good old plantation times are gone—the times when these old family servants felt an affectionate abiding interest in the family; when our good mothers nursed their sick and old, helpless ones, and their good mothers waited so kindly upon their "mistis," as they called her, and took care of the little children by day and by night. Our old black mammy was mighty dear to us children, and we loved her, for she was always doing something to please us as she screened us from many a whipping. It would seem an unnatural wonder, but nevertheless it is true, that these faithful old domestics loved their master's children better than their own, and they showed it in numberless ways without any hypocrisy. We frolicked with their children, and all played together by day and hunted together by night, and it beat the Arabian Nights to go to the old darkey's cabin of a winter night and hear him tell of ghosts and witches and jack-o-lanterns, and wildcats and grave-yards, and raw head and bloody bones, and we would listen with faith and admiration until we didn't dare to look round, and wouldn't have gone back to the big house alone for a world of gold. Bonaparte said that all men were cowards at night, but I reckon it was these old darkies that made us so, and we have hardly recovered from it yet. When I used to go a- courting I had to pass a grave-yard in the suburbs of the little village, and it was a test of my devotion that I braved its terrors on the darkest night and set at defiance the wandering spirits that haunted my path. Mrs. Arp appreciated it, I know, for she would follow me to the door when I left and anxiously listen to my retiring foot-steps; and she declares to this day she could hear me running up that hill by the grave-yard like a fast trotting horse on a shell road. The slaves of that day were loyal to their masters, and in the main were happy and contented. Of course there were some bad negroes, and there were some bad masters. Alas for the negro! Before the war there was not an outrage committed by them from the Potomac to the Rio Grande. There was not a chaingang nor a convict camp in all the South. Now, there are five thousand in the chain-gangs of Georgia and fifteen thousand more in the Southern States. There would be fifty thousand if the laws were enforced for minor offences, but we overlook them out of pity.

What a blessed privilege it was for the boys of our day to go with the cotton wagons to market, and camp out at night, and hear the trusty old wagoners tell their wonderful adventures. What a glorious time when we got home again, and brought sugar, and coffee and molasses, and had shoes all around for white and black, with the little wooden measures in them and the names written on every one. And we had Christmas, too, for white folks and black folks; little red shawls, and head handkerchiefs, jack knives and jews-harps, tobacco and pipes, were always laid up for the family servants.

The times have wonderfully changed since then— some things for better, some for worse. The old aristocracy is passing away. Some of them escaped the general wreck that followed the war and have illustrated by their energy and liberality the doctrine of the survival of the fittest—but their name is not legion. A new and hardier stock has come to the front —that class which prior to the war was under a cloud, and are now seeing their better days. The pendulum has swung to the other side. The results of the war made an opening for them and developed their energies. With no high degree of culture, they have nevertheless proved equal to the struggle up the rough hill of life and now play an important part in running the financial machine. Their practical energy has been followed by thrift. They have proved to be our best farmers and most prosperous merchants and mechanics. They now constitute the solid men of the State, and have contributed largely to the building up of our schools and churches, our factories and railroads, and the development of our mineral resources. They are shrewd and practical and not afraid of work. The two little ragged brothers who sold peanuts in Rome in 1860 are now her leading and most wealthy merchants. Two young men who then clerked for a meagre salary are now among the merchant princes of Atlanta. These are but types of the modern, self-made Southerner—a class who form a most striking contrast to the stately dignity and aristocratic repose of the grand old patriarchs and statesmen whose beautiful homes adorned the hills and groves of the South some forty years ago.

But the children of the old patricians have come down some, and the children of the common people have come up some, and they have met upon a common plane and are now working happily together, both in social and business life. Spirit and blood have united with energy and muscle, and it makes a splendid team -— the best all-round team the South has ever had.