University of Virginia Library

1. CHAPTER I.
SWALLOW BARN.

Swallow Barn is an aristocratical old edifice,
that squats, like a brooding hen, on the southern bank
of the James River. It is quietly seated, with its
vassal out-buildings, in a kind of shady pocket or
nook, formed by a sweep of the stream, on a gentle
acclivity thinly sprinkled with oaks, whose magnificent
branches afford habitation and defence to an
antique colony of owls.

This time-honoured mansion was the residence of
the family of Hazards; but in the present generation
the spells of love and mortgage conspired to translate
the possession to Frank Meriwether, who having
married Lucretia, the eldest daughter of my late uncle,
Walter Hazard, and lifted some gentlemanlike
incumbrances that had been silently brooding upon
the domain along with the owls, was thus inducted
into the proprietory rights. The adjacency of his
own estate gave a territorial feature to this alliance,
of which the fruits were no less discernible in the
multiplication of negroes, cattle and poultry, than in
a flourishing clan of Meriwethers.

The buildings illustrate three epochs in the history

of the family. The main structure is upwards
of a century old; one story high, with thick brick
walls, and a double-faced roof, resembling a ship,
bottom upwards; this is perforated with small dormant
windows, that have some such expression as
belongs to a face without eye-brows. To this is added
a more modern tenement of wood, which might
have had its date about the time of the Revolution:
it has shrunk a little at the joints, and left some crannies,
through which the winds whisper all night long.
The last member of the domicil is an upstart fabric
of later times, that seems to be ill at ease in this antiquated
society, and awkwardly overlooks the ancestral
edifice, with the air of a grenadier recruit posted
behind a testy little veteran corporal. The traditions
of the house ascribe the existence of this erection to
a certain family divan, where—say the chronicles—
the salic law was set at nought, and some pungent
matters of style were considered. It has an unfinished
drawing-room, possessing an ambitious air of
fashion, with a marble mantel, high ceilings, and
large folding doors; but being yet unplastered, and
without paint, it has somewhat of a melancholy aspect,
and may be compared to an unlucky bark lifted
by an extraordinary tide upon a sand-bank: it is
useful as a memento to all aspiring householders
against a premature zeal to make a show in the
world, and the indiscretion of admitting females into
cabinet councils.

These three masses compose an irregular pile, in

which the two last described constituents are obsequiously
stationed in the rear, like serving-men by the
chair of a gouty old gentleman, supporting the squat
and frowning little mansion which, but for the family
pride, would have been long since given over to the
accommodation of the guardian birds of the place.

The great hall door is an ancient piece of walnut
work, that has grown
too heavy for its hinges, and by
its daily travel has furrowed the floor with a deep
quadrant, over which it has a very uneasy journey.
It is shaded by a narrow porch, with a carved pediment,
upheld by massive columns of wood sadly split
by the sun. A court-yard, in front of this, of a semi-circular
shape, bounded by a white paling, and having
a gravel road leading from a large and variously
latticed gate-way around a grass plot, is embellished
by a superannuated willow that stretches forth its
arms, clothed with its pendant drapery, like a reverend
priest pronouncing a benediction. A bridle-rack
stands on the outer side of the gate, and near it a
ragged, horse-eaten plum tree casts its skeleton shadow
upon the dust.

Some lombardy poplars, springing above a mass
of shrubbery, partially screen various supernumerary
buildings around the mansion. Amongst these is to
be seen the gable end of a stable, with the date of its
erection stiffly emblazoned in black bricks near the
upper angle, in figures set in after the fashion of the
work in a girl's sampler. In the same quarter a
pigeon box, reared on a post, and resembling a huge
tee-totum, is visible, and about its several doors and

windows, a family of pragmatical pigeons are generally
strutting, bridling and bragging at each other
from sunrise until dark.

Appendant to this homestead is an extensive tract
of land that stretches for some three or four miles
along the river, presenting alternately abrupt promontories
mantled with pine and dwarf oak, and
small inlets terminating in swamps. Some sparse
portions of forest vary the landscape, which, for the
most part, exhibits a succession of fields clothed with
a diminutive growth of Indian corn, patches of cotton
or parched tobacco plants, and the occasional
varieties of stubble and fallow grounds. These are
surrounded with worm fences of shrunken chesnut,
where lizards and ground squirrels are perpetually
running races along the rails.

At a short distance from the mansion a brook
glides at a snail's pace towards the river, holding its
course through a wilderness of alder and laurel, and
forming little islets covered with a damp moss.
Across this stream is thrown a rough bridge, and not
far below, an aged sycamore twists its complex roots
about a spring, at the point of confluence of which
and the brook, a squadron of ducks have a cruising
ground, where they may be seen at any time of the
day turning up their tails to the skies, like unfortunate
gun boats driven by the head in a gale. Immediately
on the margin, at this spot, the family linen
is usually spread out by some sturdy negro women,
who chant shrill ditties over their wash tubs, and
keep up a spirited attack, both of tongue and hand,

upon sundry little besmirched and bow-legged blacks,
that are continually making somersets on the grass,
or mischievously waddling across the clothes laid out
to bleach.

Beyond the bridge, at some distance, stands a prominent
object in this picture—the most time-worn
and venerable appendage to the establishment:—a
huge, crazy and disjointed barn, with an immense
roof hanging in penthouse fashion almost to the
ground, and thatched a foot thick, with sun-burnt
straw, that reaches below the eaves in ragged flakes,
giving it an air of drowsy decrepitude. The rude
enclosure surrounding this antiquated magazine is
strewed knee-deep with litter, from the midst of which
arises a long rack, resembling a chevaux de frise,
which is ordinarily filled with fodder. This is the customary
lounge of four or five gaunt oxen, who keep up
a sort of imperturbable companionship with a sickly-looking
wagon that protrudes its parched tongue, and
droops its rusty swingle-trees in the hot sunshine,
with the air of a dispirited and forlorn invalid awaiting
the attack of a tertian ague: While, beneath the
sheds, the long face of a plough horse may be seen,
peering through the dark window of the stable, with
a spectral melancholy; his glassy eye moving silently
across the gloom, and the profound stillness of his
habitation now and then interrupted only by his
sepulchral and hoarse cough. There are also some
sociable carts under the same sheds, with their shafts
against the wall, which seem to have a free and

easy air, like a set of roysters taking their ease in a
tavern porch.

Sometimes a clownish colt, with long fetlocks and
dishevelled mane, and a thousand burs in his tail,
stalks about this region; but as it seems to be forbidden
ground to all his tribe, he is likely very soon
to encounter his natural enemy in some of the young
negroes, upon which event he makes a rapid retreat,
not without an uncouth display of his heels in passing;
and bounds off towards the brook, where he
stops and looks back with a saucy defiance, and,
after affecting to drink for a moment, gallops away,
with a hideous whinnowing, to the fields.