Occasionally one of their stately mansions could be seen on some distant elevation, surrounded by noble old trees, and superb grounds.

Here they lived during the healthy part of the year, but fled thence to summer resort in the highlands as the miasmatic season approached.
The people we saw at the stations along our route were melancholy illustrations of the evils of the rule of such an oligarchy.

There was no middle class visible anywhere--nothing but the two extremes.

A man was either a "gentleman," and wore white shirt and city-made clothes, or he was a loutish hind, clad in mere apologies for garments.

We thought we had found in the Georgia "cracker" the lowest substratum of human society, but he was bright intelligence compared to the South Carolina "clay-eater" and "sand-hiller." The "cracker" always gave hopes to one that if he had the advantage of common schools, and could be made to understand that laziness was dishonorable, he might develop into something.