It is Sunday morning, but the service to-day is at the other end of
the parish, some twenty miles away. The sky seems brighter and the
grass more green than on the work-days of the week: the birds sing
more cheerily, and seem to know that for one day they are safe from
man's persecution. Certain it is that the wary crow will on that day
eye you saucily as you pass within ten yards of him, while on any
other you cannot approach him within a hundred. At ten o'clock the
household is assembled in the drawing-room, the piano--with, it may
be, a flute accompaniment--is made to do the organ's duty, and the
full service of the Prayer-Book is read and sung and listened to with
reverent attention. There are yet two hours to dinner, and as the
wild, wailing chant from the negro-yard comes to our ears we determine
to visit their chapel. If there was one point in which, more than
in others, the Carolina planter was faithful to his duty, it was in
securing the privileges of religion to his slaves. Every plantation
had its chapel, sometimes rivaling in its appointments the churches
for the whites.
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