Man's social nature induces aggregation into communities, which stimulates an ambition to excel in every undertaking. From this emulation grows excellence and progress in every laudable enterprise. These small communities, as they grew from accessions coming into the country, began to build rude places for public worship, which were primitive log-cabins, and served as well the purposes of a school-house. Here the adult population assembled on the Sabbath, and the children during the week. This intercourse, together with the dependence of every one at times for neighborly assistance, was greatly promotive of harmony and mutual confidence. Close and familiar acquaintance revealed to all the peculiar character of every one—the virtuous and the vicious, the energetic or the indolent, the noble and the ignoble—and all very soon came to be appreciated according to their merit.
Rude sports constituted the amusements of the young—wrestling, leaping, and hunting; and he who was most expert at these was the neighborhood's pride: he rode from church with the prettiest girl, and was sure to be welcomed by her parents when he came; and to be selected by such an one was to become the neighborhood's belle. At log-rollings, quiltings, and Saturday-night frolics, he was the first and the most admired.
The girls, too, were not without distinction—she who could spin the greatest number of cuts of cotton, or weave the greatest number of yards of cloth, was most distinguished, and most admired; but especially was she distinguished who could spin and weave the neatest fabric for her own wear, of white cloth with a turkey-red stripe—cut, and make it fit the labor-rounded person and limbs—or make, for father's or brother's wear, the finest or prettiest piece of jean—cook the nicest dinners for her beau, or dance the longest without fatigue.
The sexes universally associated at the same school, (a system unfortunately grown out of use,) and grew up together with a perfect knowledge of the disposition, temperament, and general character of each other. And, as assuredly as the boy is father to the man, the girl is mother to the woman; and these peculiarities were attractive or repulsive as they differed in individuals, and were always an influence in the selection of husbands and wives. The prejudices of childhood endure through life, particularly those toward persons. They are universally predicated upon some trait of manner or character, and these, as in the boy perceived, are ever prominent in the man. So, too, with the girl, and they only grow with the woman. This is a paramount reason why parties about contracting marriage-alliances should be well aware of whom they are about to select. The consequence of this intercommunication of the sexes from childhood, in the primitive days of Georgia's first settlement, was seen in the harmony of families. In the age which followed, a separation or divorce was as rare as an earthquake; and when occurring, agitated the whole community. For then a marriage was deemed a life-union, for good or for evil, and was not lightly or inconsiderately entered into.
The separation of the sexes in early youth, and especially at school, destroys or prevents in an eminent degree the restraining influences upon the actions of each other, and that tender desire for the society of each other, which grows from childhood's associations. Brought together at school in early life, when the mind and soul are receiving the impressions which endure through life, they naturally form intimacies, and almost always special partialities and preferences. Each has his or her favorite, these partialities are usually reciprocal, and their consequence is a desire on the part of each to see the other excel. To accomplish this, children, as well as grown people, will make a greater effort than they will simply to succeed or to gratify a personal ambition to that effect. Thus they sympathize with and stimulate each other. Every Georgia boy of fifty years ago, with gray-head and tottering step now, remembers his sweetheart, for whom he carried his hat full of peaches to school, and for whom he made the grape-vine swing, and how at noon he swung her there.
'T is bonny May; and I to-day
Am wrinkled seventy-four,
Still I enjoy, as when a boy,
Much that has gone before.
Is it the leaves and trees, or sheaves
Of yellow, ripened grain,
Which wake to me, in memory,
My boyhood's days again?
These seem to say 't is bonny May,
As when they sweetly grew,
And gave their yield, in wood and field,
To me, when life was new.
But nought beside—ah, woe betide!—
Which grew with me is here—
The home, the hall, the mill, the all
Which young life holds so dear.
The school-house, spring, and little thing,
With eyes so bright and blue,
Who'd steal away with me and play
When school's dull hours were through,
Are memories now; and yet, oh! how
It seems but yesterday
Since I was there, with that sweet dear,
In the wild wood at play.
The hill was steep where we would leap;
The grape-vine swing hung high,
And I would throw the swing up so
That, startled, she would cry.
But though she cried, she still relied
(And seemed to have no fear)
On me to hold the swing, and told
Me "not to frighten her."
But I was wild, and she no child,
And not afraid, I deemed;
So tossed as high the swing as I
Could—when she fell and screamed.
She was not harmed; but I, alarmed,
Ran quickly to assist,
And lifted her, all pale with fear,
Within my arms, and kissed
Her pallid cheek, ere she could speak:
But I had seen, you know,
(Ah! what of this? that sight and kiss
Was fifty years ago,)
That little boot and pretty foot,
So neatly formed and small—
The swelling calf, and stifled laugh—
How I remember all!
That lovely one has long since gone,
Is dust, and only dust, now;
Yet I recall that swing and fall,
As though it had been just now.
Take these lines, reader, if you please, as an evidence of how the memories growing out of the associations of boyhood's school-days endure through life. This association of the sexes operates as a restraint upon both, salutary to good conduct and good morals. Such restraints are far more effective than the staid lessons of some old, wrinkled duenna of a school-mistress, whose failure to find a sweetheart in girlhood, or a husband in youthful womanhood, has soured her toward every man, and filled her with hatred for the happiness she witnesses in wedded life, and which is ever present all around her. Her warnings are in violation of nature. She has forgotten she was ever young or inspired with the feelings and hopes of youth. Men are monsters, and marriage a hell upon earth. Girls will not believe this, and will get married. How much better, then, that they should cultivate, in association, the generous and natural feelings of the heart, and during the period allotted by nature for the growth of the feelings natural to the human bosom, as well as to the growth of the person and mind, than to be told what they should be by one disappointed of all the fruits of them, and hating the world because she is! It is