The time was almost feudal,
but wilder and richer than any feudal day, in that fief tribute was
unknown. The original landlord of these acres had availed himself
of the easy laws and easy ways of the time and place, and taken
over to himself from the loose public domain a small realm all his
own. Here, almost in seclusion, certainly in privacy, a generation
had been spent in a life as baronial as any ever known in old
Virginia in earlier days. A day's ride to a court house, two days
to a steamer, five hours to get a letter to or from the occasional
post--these things seem slight in a lifelong accustomedness; and
here few had had closer touch than this with civilization.
[Illustration: Tallwoods]
The plantation itself was a little kingdom, and largely supplied
its own wants. Mills, looms, shops,--all these were part of the
careless system, easy and opulent, which found support and gained
arrogance from a rich and generous environment. The old house
itself, if it might be called old, built as it had been scarce
thirty years before, lay in the center of a singular valley, at the
edge of the Ozark Hills.
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