prevention of the catastrophe, and to enjoy the joke, which made him a thousand times afterwards "shake" with jollity "like a bowlful of jelly." A NEW ERA From a Speech delivered at Winchester, Virginia, 1867. THE plantation interest is gone, and farming, embracing every variety of products instead of a few large staples-arboriculture, horticulture, and stock-feeding and grazing, and cultivating on a small scale none but the most improved lands, and these tilled to the square inch by the most able, intelligent, and skilful laborers, hired at a rate which close farming only can afford-must be substituted, and will change and immensely enrich the whole system of our agriculture. This is not a matter of theory, but it is a stubborn fact, a stern necessity which we must look steadily in the face, with the resolution, industry, and perseverance to conform to the change. It is repulsive to our habits, awkward and burdensome at first, and we were wholly unprepared for it. But we have no alternative and must abide the result. How abide it? Fold our arms and cry out, "What can we do?" "We have no capital." No; there is a blessing beyond measure in this change. Nothing but fire and blood could have driven us to it, and it has shown what a weakness to our people African slavery was. Its weakness was so great that itself amounted to wickedness. Nothing but negrodom ever could have conquered such a people as were the masters of Virginia slaves! The faith of Jackson foresaw this: the war was inevitable, it was providential. Nothing but war could have shocked us out of this weakness into a new strength and vigor. We had to fight, and had to surrender, too; but it was in the end to be a noble, a great and incalculable victory. It was to build anew thousands of cottages, hamlets, and towns and cities where heretofore stood lone mansions of masters whose broad-spread acres were scourged by slaves. It was to improve labor by a price laid upon it; it was to bring an eye over every inch of soil and to fructify it by the watchful interest and active attention of its own proprietor; and it was to increase a white population that would be numerous and strong and give the land its greatest pride, a solid Caucasian yeomanry, instead of being filled by ignorant, lazy slaves of a degraded race! Do you say that this will overdo farming? I reply that farming, the production of bread-stuffs, fruits, and grapes, can't be overdone. The more farming, less will labor and living cost, and a people can't be but strong that can and will produce its own bread and meat and clothing cheap, and the more plentiful the cheaper. The lands will pay all the laborers worthy of their hire that you can put upon them, and the old problem: "How little labor for how much land?" will be more than solved by its opposing problem: "How much labor on how little land?" Like Agricola at Rome, on one-tenth, after division to nine sons, you shall realize more than was made before on the whole. Don't call out for Hercules, don't cry to the North nor to the money-changers for capital-a curse of the times that sells conscience and soils honor, and betrays comrades and country-but put your own shoulders to the wheel! Oh! young men who have fathers with naught now left but negro-scourged tobacco and wheat fields, burthened with old debts enough to break the hearts of honest men and make them bow in want with sorrow to the gravepull off your broadcloths-bare your arms-blister your hands until blisters become callous, to plough and reap the plenty which earnest labor will surely bring home to pay debts and provide comfort and maintain manly independence! You have no longer the host of slavery's drones to feed and clothe; your expenses now are comparatively small. Only be self-denying, determined, and work! You need not fear that there will be too many of you in the field. But if there are, those not wanting and not willing there can find occupations now multiplied and varied beyond what plantations afforded, to try their fortunes on. Mining, manufacturing, commerce, mechanic arts, will now open avenues for skill and enterprise; and improvements in all these will soon pay professional avocations higher fees and wages than ever compensated them before. Have your fathers thousands of acres of land which now yield no income and cannot afford to pay labor for their cultivation? Lay off the garden spots, scrape the mounds of humus all around every curtilage, compost your wasted manures for the little space you can till, and sell or rent out or let lie out every impoverished acre. Aye, do better-advertise to select emigrants that you will gladly give to them one-half your superfluous lands and help them build and fence them, if they will come and settle the other half. Their settlement will make the other half far more valuable than was or is the whole. They will give you neighborhood and life, and bring to you new lights, and be your source of most efficient labor and of richest terms. Abandon "one ideas"; here it is wheat, there it is tobacco, yonder corn and potatoes, and somewhere else it is brandy and goober-peas. Go to the fields and be taught by your own experience; learn of other crops and prepare your own fertilizers from the forest leaves and pine tags and straw and from well-fed cattle and pig pens. Don't stand on the river bank like the fool of Horace and wait for the waters to pass by before you cross this Rubicon. Don't wait to manure until you can get capital to buy guano. Borrow not at all, but work, and you will have wherewith to lend. The faith of Jackson saw this, that the war would put our young men to work. No more fair hands! No more lazy morning hours! No more cigars and juleps! No more cardparties and club-idleness! No more siren retreats in summer, and city hells in winter! The hard necessity which presses down upon our people may change the Virginia character in some lamentable respects, but it will also happily strengthen it in other important traits. It will dispel some weaknesses which, though grand and noble, impeded the power and progress of the State. Of the true old Virginian it may well be said: High-minded he was ever, and improvident, Pleasures he loved, but honor was his idol. To young Virginians I would say: High-minded, pitiful, and generous be as were your fathers; honor must ever be your idol; but be just before you are generous; and let a life of mere pleasure and all improvidence now cease. JOHN SERGEANT WISE [1846 JOHN J. H. LINDSAY OHN SERGEANT WISE, son of Henry A. Wise, of Virginia, and Sarah, daughter of the Honorable John Sergeant, of Philadelphia, was born at Rio de Janeiro, December 26, 1846, when his father was United States Minister to Brazil. After 1847 he lived at the paternal residence in the County of Accomac, Virginia, and in Richmond, when his father was Governor, from 1856 to 1860. He attended several preparatory schools, and the Virginia Military Institute at Lexington. He remained at the Institute until May, 1864, when the cadet corps joined General Breckenridge in the Shenandoah Valley to repel General Siegel. He was wounded in the battle of Newmarket, May 15, 1864. In the summer of that year he was at Petersburg with his father, and in October was commissioned drillmaster with the rank and pay of a lieutenant in the provisional army of the Confederacy, and was in the battle of Saltville. The next winter he was adjutant to a reserve battalion of artillery, and when Richmond was evacuated he was the last despatch-bearer from Jefferson Davis to General Lee, and bore General Lee's last despatch to Mr. Davis at Danville. While bearing return despatches, he learned of the surrender of Lee's army, and, turning southward, made his way to the army of General Johnston, with which he served until its surrender. After the war Mr. Wise returned to his studies. At the University of Virginia he gained the debaters' medal of the Washington Literary Society, and was graduated in law, moral philosophy, and political economy in 1867, and was a student under those famous teachers, John B. Minor and William H. McGuffey. He began the practice of his profession in Richmond before he was twenty-one, and two years later married Miss Eva Douglas, of Nashville, Tennessee. He was a partner of his father until the death of Governor Wise in 1876. About 1875 he became interested in a controversy for a Virginia senatorship between Colonel Knight and General Bradley T. Johnson, and published a series of newspaper letters arraigning the party managers for their corrupt methods. The prominence thus gained brought him to the front in the so-called reform element in Richmond politics. He supported the movement which resulted in the |