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HOSPITALITY.
much after the same fashion. Between the hours of five and six in the morning, a tap comes at your chamber-door, and a black-visaged smiling damsel enters with shoeless feet, and grinning lips shewing their two rows of ivory, and with the accustomed “mornin', missis," presents you with a cup.of delicious coffee. The morning's costume arranged with due precision, you quit your chamber, and passing through the “ hall," where two or three black servant boys are spreading the snowy damask, and otherwise preparing for the plentiful breakfast, you gain the drawing-room. Stepping through its open windows or doors, you find yourself in a covered gallery, amid, perhaps, a group of children and their nurses, busily employed in various little infantile amusements. Upon the appearance of “ the lady" these, however, are immediately postponed, as each miniature man or woman comes forward with native courtesy and outstretched hand, and offers the usual compliments. A grateful breeze greets your cheek with its Wand whisperings ; and the early sunbeams, devoid of their intense meridian heat, glisten on the dew-besprinkled leaves, or dance in the ripples of the neighbouring ponds. If the property should be a sugar estate, and it is the season of harvest when you visit it, many a jocund laugh comes from the mill-door, where, under direction of the manager or overseer, the sails are unfurled and given to the wind ; and with shout and creak, and cracking of whip, the sober oxen are dragging home cartloads of golden sugar-canes. Thus the time wears on ;—at one moment watching the busy group at the milldoor, at another holding converse with the lovely skies, or following with dazzled glance, the rapid flittings of the honey-seeking fly-bird ;* and anon poring over the pages of some spirit-stirring volume, or in occasional snatches of conversation with the hospitable hostess. At length the master of the domain, in his snow-white dress, and broad-brimmed hat, returns from his morning ride * The humming bird, or colibri.