THE TURN OUT
In the good old days of fescues, abisselfas, and anpersants, terms which used to be familiar in this country during the Revolutionary War, and which lingered in some of our county schools for a few years afterward, I visited my friend Captain Griffin, who resided about seven miles to the eastward of Wrightsborough, then in Richmond, but now in Columbia County. I reached the captain's hospitable home on Easter, and was received by him and his good lady with a Georgia welcome of 1790. It was warm from the heart, and taught me in a moment that the obligations of the visit were upon their side, not mine. Such receptions were not peculiar at that time to the captain and his family; they were common throughout the state. Where are they now! and where the generous hospitalities which invariably followed them! I see them occasionally at the contented farmer's door and at his festive board, but when they shall have taken leave of these, Georgia will know them no more.
The day was consumed in the interchange of news between the captain and myself (though, I confess, it might have been better employed), and the night found us seated round a temporary fire, which the captain's sons had kindled up for the purpose of dyeing eggs. It was a common custom of those days with boys to dye and peck eggs on Easter Sunday and for a few days afterward. They were colored according to the fancy of the dyer—some yellow, some green, some purple, and some with a variety of colors, borrowed from a piece of calico. They were not unfrequently beautified with a taste and skill which would have extorted a compliment from Hezekiah Niles, if he had seen them a year ago, in the hands of the "young operatives," in some of the northern manufactories. No sooner was the work of dyeing finished, than our young
