Among my childish recollections is an intricate combination of great-grandfathers, white mulberries, gold dollars, a lone eye, guinea eggs, pipes, and bloody massacres, all centering around a visit from my own great-grandfather, Dr. John Phillips, and his friend, Judge John Y. Mason.

"Somebody's comin' down de lane en it's ole Marser, kase I knows him by his high-top gig en his star-face critter," called out a little colored boy, George Washington CÆsar Napoleon Bonaparte, whose keen eyes had caught sight of an approaching gig. "Dar's anudder gemman alongside of him en anudder li'l boy settin' in de foots of de gig."

By the time the visitors were at the gate, heralded by the barking dogs and the little colored children calling "H-y-e-r comes ole Marser, h-y-e-r comes ole Marser!" the whole family had assembled on the veranda to welcome the guests.

The first to alight was a graceful, courtly old man with the bearing of a soldier—my great-grandfather. The artificial eye which had taken the place of one of those provided by Nature was a badge of heroism, reminiscent of the war of 1812. After affectionate greetings from children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, servants and dogs, he held out his hands to his companion and assisted him to alight.

"This," he said, "is my young friend, Judge John Y. Mason, whom you know."

From my great-grandfather's point of view, Judge Mason may have been youthful, but from mine he was of great age, less venerable than his friend and companion only because he lacked the distinguishing title of patriarchal relationship, and looked out upon the world, like ordinary people, through two eyes.

"And this," he said, jumping the little boy out, "is my still younger friend, Ned Drewry, whose family you know."

Then began the unpacking of the gig-box, which we eagerly watched. I remember being especially interested in a bucket of white mulberries and a basket of guinea eggs.

Later, as a reward for reciting "Little Drops of Water," I received a shiny gold dollar, one of the first minted.

When I hear the lament of to-day, that there is no money in poetry, I recall my early lesson to the contrary. My first effort having been so successful I gave "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" as a voluntary, in the mercenary hope that the twinkles, like the drops, might be transmuted into gold. After curtseying to my great-grandfather my thanks for the dollar I ran across the room and, looking inquiringly at Judge Mason, asked:

"Are you anybody's great-grandfather? No, 'course you couldn't be, 'cause you've got two eyes."

As my own great-grandfather was the only relation of that rank whom I had ever seen, it had been borne in upon my mind that a single eye was the distinguishing characteristic of great-grandfathers.

Judge Mason's manner of smoking next attracted my attention. I had never seen a pipe used except by the negroes on the plantation.

"Did you run off and play with the little colored children and not mind your black mammy and learn bad habits when you were a little boy is the reason you smoke pipes now?"

"No," he replied. "I never learned any bad habits from the negroes. They have very few bad habits. All the bad habits I have ever learned were from white people."

Knocking the ashes out of his pipe he said:

"My child, when great-grandfathers were little babies this—" taking out his tobacco-bag and filling his pipe from it—"was the only real money in this country and was of greater value than the kind which you now hold in your little hand."

Then he went on to tell me in words that a child could understand that money debts were not even recoverable. Tobacco debts only were valid, and to sell bad tobacco or pay a debt with it was a crime, precisely as it is now to sell or pay counterfeit money. Tobacco was the currency, and an excess was as injurious as an over-issue of bank paper, depreciating on the market and causing everything to rise in price. Great care was taken to burn bad tobacco, and it was as important to the uniformity of the currency in those days as is now the exclusion of counterfeits. All the viewings, censorships, inspections and regulations of the amount of tobacco to be cultivated by each planter, the quality to be gathered from each plant, the rules prescribed, were as important as the laws of the mint are now.

Judge Mason's tobacco-bag was the next subject of my inquiry.

"'Tisn't cloth-cloth. Is it tobacco-cloth?" I asked. "Did people have tobacco-cloth as well as tobacco-money in those days?"

"No; this is rattlesnake skin. The snake was killed by Charles Lewis, who lived a long time ago in my county, Augusta. The Indians caught him, tied his hands behind him and made him walk two hundred miles. As they were going along a high precipice he broke the cords and jumped down. The Indians followed and he escaped by springing over a fallen tree, landing among the tall weeds. His pursuers did not see him fall and they jumped over both the tree and the man and ran on as fast as they could. Lying there he heard the hissing of a snake and opening his eyes saw a large rattlesnake almost touching him. It moved its rattles and twice they rested upon his ear and neck. He was so numbed with fright that he could not move, luckily for him, for if he had moved a muscle or breathed the snake would have bitten him. Its eyes glared into his and it seemed to think he was dead, and so wriggled away. He picked up a stone and hit it upon the head, killing it, and carried home the rattles and skin and this bag was made from a piece of that skin."

The mother of this Charles Lewis was the beautiful daughter of the Laird of Loch Lyn, and to his father, John Lewis, was accredited the introduction of red clover. The white or wild clover was of indigenous growth and abounded in great plenty, but the red clover was not known until the blood of the red man, shed by the Lewises and their followers, suddenly dyed the trefoil to its sanguinary hue. The Indians fully believed this legend and superstitiously held the red clover sacred. The superstition spread among the settlers and for a long time the milk of a cow that had eaten the blood-stained blossom was believed to be tainted with blood.

Little Ned Drewry, the third occupant of the gig, with a boy's natural indifference to poetic effusion, had slipped away during my "twinkle little star" and was playing "paterroller" with the colored children and the bloodhounds, and my elders began to talk of the man for whom he was named, a victim of the Nat Turner insurrection. I was not usually permitted to hear such gruesome stories, but if they thought of me at all they must have supposed that I was too young to understand or too sleepy to notice. So they told some of the painful incidents connected with the startling episode of 1832, while I leaned back in my chair and drooped my little head. Judge Mason's sister, Mrs. Boykin, my grandmother's friend at Old Point Comfort, had come near being killed in the insurrection. She was saved by her maid, who hid her in a woodpile till the danger was over.

Thus the simple-hearted, modest, unassuming old man sat with his long fig-stem Powhatan clay pipe in his mouth, smoking and talking and making history for a little child who never forgot the stories he told. Judge Mason was given all the honors of his State—ten years a Member of the Virginia Assembly, six years her Representative in Congress, a Judge of the United States Court for Virginia, Secretary of the Navy under President Tyler, Attorney-General and Secretary of the Navy under President Polk, Minister to France in the Pierce administration, one of the three who drew up the Ostend Manifesto—all these he was to the world.

To me he has always remained the gentle-mannered man with sweet face and soft voice who told the old-time stories in my plantation home while all, from the master to the humblest servant and the smallest child, listened with eager attention and delighted hearts. Two years before the opening of the war between the States my grandmother's heart was saddened by the news from Paris of the death of this old friend.