WOMAN IN VIRGINIA.

Westport Times, Volume VIII, Issue 1155, 3 March 1874, Page 2

WOMAN IN VIRGINIA.

A correspondent of the New York Tribune, whose letters are full of valuable information concerning the present condition of Virginia, relieves the drier details into which he enters by the following amusing aueclotes illustrative of the position of woman, and the fatal preveiance of intemperance in that state:—" If you get a look into the back dcor you may see the mother nursing a baby, and if you see the father he has, probably, a gun over his shoulder and no game in his hands. 'lt must be a hard thing to be a woman in this country,' said I to a native, seeing a bedraggled mother working around. ' By dash sir.' he replied sharply,' it is a dashed hard thing to bo a man iu this country too ; the woman have tongues.' I was very glad to hear it. * * # As we were sitting around the fire, I heard a mellow voice remark, ' I'll take a little sugar iu mine. ' There was quite a company of travellers sitting arouud the dig coal fire, and among them were Northern and Southern men, and I noticed that most of them 'took sugar in theirs. ' As the sugar passed round one of them, a Northern man, interjected a reminiscence of campaigning in Southampton county, Virginia, where, he said, he had observed duving the war that when he c.uno to an old apple orchard he invariably found that it belonged to a widow. 'lf you had asked what her husband bad died of,' added a Virginian, ' she would have tokl you that he died of the " new ;' " aud proceeded to explain that new applejack has been from time immemorial to the inhabitants of that region au irresistijly aud peculiarly fatal stimulant ; whereby another of the company was reminded of a railroad engineer in South Western Virginia who received from one of his subordinates a section map of part of the Hue on which he found at a ccrtv'u point this marginal note, ' E..tensive indications of defunct Virginians hero,' which puzzled him until the surveyor explained that at that point he had found a large bed of mint. ' It, is scarcely necessary to add, perhaps, that this " grass " is one of the ingredients of miut-julep.