Says the stanza which Dr. Johnson was so fond of quoting, and really it is
so good that I will transcribe the whole of it -
"Verse sweetens toil, however rude the sound -
All at her work the village maiden sings,
Nor, while she turns the giddy wheel around,
Revolves the sad vicissitudes of things."
Verse it seems can sweeten the toil of slaves in a tobacco factory.
"We encourage their singing as much as we can," said the brother of the
proprietor, himself a diligent masticator of the weed, who attended us,
and politely explained to us the process of making plug tobacco; "we
encourage it as much as we can, for the boys work better while singing.
Sometimes they will sing all day long with great spirit; at other times
you will not hear a single note. They must sing wholly of their own
accord, it is of no use to bid them do it."
"What is remarkable," he continued, "their tunes are all psalm tunes, and
the words are from hymn-books; their taste is exclusively for sacred
music; they will sing nothing else. Almost all these persons are
church-members; we have not a dozen about the factory who are not so. Most
of them are of the Baptist persuasion; a few are Methodists."
I saw in the course of the day the Baptist church in which these people
worship, a low, plain, but spacious brick building, the same in which the
sages of Virginia, a generation of great men, debated the provisions of
the constitution. It has a congregation of twenty-seven hundred persons,
and the best choir, I heard somebody say, in all Richmond. Near it is the
Monumental church, erected on the site of the Richmond theatre, after the
terrible fire which carried mourning into so many families.
In passing through an old part of Main-street, I was shown an ancient
stone cottage of rude architecture and humble dimensions, which was once
the best hotel in Richmond. Here, I was told, there are those in Richmond
who remember dining with General Washington, Judge Marshall, and their
cotemporaries. I could not help comparing it with the palace-like
building put up at Richmond within two or three years past, named the
Exchange Hotel, with its spacious parlors, its long dining-rooms, its airy
dormitories, and its ample halls and passages, echoing to the steps of
busy waiters, and guests coming and departing. The Exchange Hotel is one
of the finest buildings for its purpose in the United States, and is
extremely well-kept.
I paid a visit to the capitol, nobly situated on an eminence which
overlooks the city, and is planted with trees. The statue of Washington,
executed by Houdon for the state of Virginia, in 1788, is here. It is of
the size of life, representing Gen.
