, at exorbitant
prices, we resumed our ride. That expedition will never be forgotten
by me. At its close, I felt that my powers of diplomacy were quite
equal to any emergency. Oh, the sullen, sour-looking women that I
sweetly smiled upon, and flattered into good humor, praising their
homes, the cloth upon the loom, the truck-patch (often a mass of
weeds), the tow-headed babies (whom I caressed and admired), never
hinting at my object until the innocent victims offered of their own
accord to "show me round." At the spring-house I praised the new
country butter, which "looked so very good that I must have a pound or
two," and then skilfully leading the conversation to the subject of
chickens and eggs, carelessly displaying a few crisp Confederate
bills, I at least became the happy possessor of a few dozens of eggs
and a chicken or two, at a price which only their destination
reconciled me to.
At one house, approached by a road so tortuous and full of stumps that
we were some time before reaching it, I distinctly heard a dreadful
squawking among the fowls, but when we arrived at the gate, not one
was to be seen, and the mistress declared she hadn't a "_one_: hadn't
saw a chicken for a _coon's_ age.
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