Correspondence of the Richmond Dispatch.
from the country.
Goochland, Friday, Nov. 30th.
This is a gloomy day — the finest of all possible days for taking the field against the feathered tribe.
You need not, however, fear a fresh infliction upon that score.
My sporting days are all over, and the birds are pretty safe from any enterprise of mine.
I have, therefore, no new experiences to record, and will bore you no more with pointer, double barrels, and game bags.
I mean merely to say that this is a dull day, and that you are indebted to its dullness for this communication.
I have, incontinently, sat down for the purpose of inditing an epistle to the Dispatch. "But how the subject theme may gang Let time and chanced termine,
Perhaps it may turn out a song,
Perhaps turn out a sermon.
And, as I am somewhat at a loss, suppose I relate a very singular incident, which just at this time is dividing the attention of the neighbors with secession in South Carolina and the war in China. I shall tell the tale as it was told to me, professing to have no knowledge about the dignity of hearsay. It appears that one day last week, a negro man belonging to Dr. Tredway, who lives a few miles above Goochland Court-House, came to his master and told him that he had overheard a conversation between a negro belonging to Mr. George W. Turner, and a woman belonging to Dr. T., whom the negro in question had for a wife, in which the husband revealed a plot between two other negroes of Mr. Turner, and a white man named De Grasse Drumright, (or, as the neighbors call him, Grassy Drumlight,) to murder Mr. Turner. It seems Mr. T. had gone to Richmond for the purpose of selling a crop of wheat or tobacco, and that the conspirators suspected he would return with all the money upon his person. They were to waylay him on his way from Cedar Point, where they knew he would get out of the boat, murder him, plunder him, and bury him in a grave, which they had prepared for him in a spot so secluded and so sheltered from observation by a thick and almost impenetrable growth of brush wood extending for a long distance on every side around, that his remains might chance never to be discovered until the sounding of the last trumpet. As the negro who told this story bore a very bad character, Dr. Tredway refused to listen to it, until he told him that if he either would secrete himself, or cause some one else to be secreted in a certain tobacco house, he would bring the negro who had revealed the plot to his wife within earshot of the place, and there induce him to go over the whole scheme. Dr. Tredway thought it best to follow but this suggestion, although he did not expect anything important to result from it. He accordingly placed two gentlemen in ambush in the tobacco house, having first told the informer to proceed as he had proposed. At the appointed time, both negroes came to the rendezvous.--Dr. T. S. negro then asked the other some questions about the intended murder and robbery; the latter denied all knowledge of any such design; the former told him dental was useless, since he had overheard his revelation to his wife. Being thus pressed, the accused negro came out, confessed his knowledge, and detailed the scheme as I have given it above.--Upon searching, the grave was discovered, the two plotting negroes were sent to jail, and Drumlight fled, but was arrested in the lower part of the county. There was no evidence but that of the negroes against him, and he was consequently discharged. The accused negroes are in jail awaiting trial. I observe the Herald has taken up the New York Times' slander. Is it not remarkable that all the taunts of the press have not been able to make the Times break silence on that subject? I should suppose that the article of the Herald would have made a dumb man open his mouth. It was so erect, so personal, so bitter, that I cannot conceive how the Times' man could have held his peace. This man Raymond was, I believe at one time, a member of Congress. Verity, dignitaries, in that part of the world, must have a strange idea of what is right and becoming. It surely is the part of a gentleman, when he discovers that he has been the means of inflicting an injustice, to make all the reparation in his power, and it was to have been presumed, prima facis, that a member of Congress was a gentleman! Presumption, however, if it ever arrived at any such hasty conclusion, must evidently have been very far in the wrong. It is plain enough that at least one man has had, in his life, the right to have "honorable" written before his name without having a spark of honor on him. I have no doubt he sent his reporter to Richmond with instructions to most lying libel he could concoct. It was his cue then to traduce, vilify, and belittle everything South of M son'sand Dixon's. His tone seems to have down wonderfully. Apparently, he is a little alarmed at the storm he has been trying so long to raise. Nothing can be milder or more conciliatory than the general tenor of his paper. Even in Charleston and Columbia, his reporters find something not altogether odious. I have a No of his paper now before me, in which one of these reporters regrets the excesses into which fanaticism has hurried the North, and does not appear to wonder at the South for becoming thoroughly alarmed, and making the most determined preparations for resistance. Really, I think if the Prince of Wale were once more to visit Richmond, a Times' reporter would not discover so much that was odious in his reception. By the bye, a very remarkable circumstance, in connection with this subject, seems to have escaped your observation. The correspondent of the "sure enough" Times.--the London Times, not its in New York.--dates from Baltimore, where he says the Prince as just arrived by way of the Chesapeake! Isn't the Thunderer's intelligence worthy of credit?. I observe that you call Mr. Miller's famous dog "Carlo." That is a misnomer. His real name was "Carb.," after the Roman Consul, I presume; for he was as stern and dignified in his demeanor as any "Roman of them a " P.
