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510	Mississippi	Historical	Society.
ity and frequently as they are plucked, warm from the sun; many of the men spend days in the woods herding cattle or deer stalking, and they swim water courses and catch the drenching winter rains without thinking of hot teas, warm baths and dry clothes to keep them from taking cold. The universal practice is to let the drenched garments dry on the system. All ages plunge with impunity into the streams, and the children and the ducks live in the water together. Yet there is little or no sickness, scarcely ever a fever, not a doctor within fifty miles; the men are robust, active and long-lived; the women beautiful, and the children lively as crickets and ruddy as rosebuds. Let the river planter, who swallows some filthy potion three times a day throughout the year to keep off a chill or break a fever or give him an appetite, think of this! Let the man who finds himself growing richer and weaker every day, his capacity diminishing as his means increase, living childless or more melancholy still, seeing his children summoned every fall like autumn leaves to the tomb, remember that there is within our own State a region more healthy than the Alleghanies, where rosy health dwells perpetually, where no wedded fireside is without the smile and prattle of childhood, and where one-half the amount expended in an uncomfortable trip to the North would supply all the comforts of life in abundance. Land, as we have said, may be had at government price, or improved with comfortable cabins, a fine spring and a clearing may be had at a small advance. The most juicy and richly flavored grass-fed beef can be bought at three or four cents; butter at a bit a pound; eggs and fowls, potatoes, etc., at a mere song; cheese for a trifle; venison for the shooting of it; and an owner of five hundred or one thousand head of cattle will thank you for penning, milking and salting his cows. It is literally a land of ?milk and honey??for the wild bee builds her nest in many a hollow tree, and hives by the dozen garnish the gable ends of every farm house.
Ellisville was named after the Hon. Powhattan Ellis, our present Minister to Mexico. He formerly held the courts here and is held in high esteem by the people. The town itself is a mere cluster of houses?some four or five?and the courts scarcely deserve the name as the term seldom lasts more than one day. Happy people!
A Trip Through the Piney Woods.?Claiborne.	517
Our visit to Ellisville was saddened by intelligence of the death on the previous evening of Col. Samuel Ellis, for many years the Representative of that county and one of the noblest of his species. Col. Ellis was a blacksmith by trade, and was a man of strong mind, much improved by his long political associations. A large audience had assembled to hear Messrs. Gwin and Freeman, but this melancholy news hung like a pall over the whole assemblage. Those gentlemen did not, therefore, speak in detail as they were in the habit of doing on the canvass. We then, by request, pronounced a funeral eulogy over our departed friend and passed on to the southward for the county of Perry. Spent the night with Mr. Sumrall, one of the oldest and worthiest men in the State. He has lived there ever since the settlement of the county. Everything around him looked superannuated and solitary. The trees had an aged aspect and were gnarled and mossy. An old house dog bayed a melancholy notice of our approach. His antique but spacious dwelling was weather-beaten and decayed. The garden was grown up in weeds and the shrubbery that had once been nursed there by the hand of beauty looked stunted and neglected. Even the faithful rose vine which clings so long to the deserted dwelling and blooms over the graves of those that loved it in life was already in ?the sere and yellow leaf.? The innocent bosoms on which its clustered buds used to repose were long since gone; and there it lay as if conscious of widowhood, its tendrils broken and ?wasting its fragrance on the desert air.? There too in the soft light of a July moon musing alone over the memories of the past, sat the fine old man, his head frosted over with wintry years but his eye still beaming with benevolence. He had raised a highly respectable family of children? had dowered them with enough of this world?s goods and they were all gone to distant settlements. He was left alone. A few months previous to our visit he had buried the aged partner of his bosom and now felt the curse of solitude. They err who suppose that age, though it dims the eye and shakes the nerves, can freeze the heart or weaken the affections. It is not so. Youth?all glowing as it is?sooner forgets the images of love. New scenes?impressions?balm the wounded soul, and ambition or gain distil the waters of Lethe over its afflictions. But