Southern Historical Society Papers, Volume 18.
Reverend J. William Jones, Ed.

---

An inheritance of graciousness.

Take, for example, the home life of the plantation. It was larger, ampler and more perfect than that which exists in the Republic to-day, not because it was more leisurely and freer from care, but because the aims and purposes of the various members of the family were more concentrated. The hospitality that was a feature of it was more unrestrained and simpler, because it bore no relation whatever to the demands and suggestions of what is now known in Sunday newspapers as ‘Society.’

The home life of the old plantation has had a marked influence on the Southern women of to-day in their struggles with adverse circumstances. They lack, for one thing, the assurance of those who have inherited the knack of making their way among strangers. The poetic young Bostonian who has been writing recently of ‘The Mannerless Sex’ and ‘The Ruthless Sex’ could never have made the Southern woman a text for his articles, and I trust that for generations yet to come they will retain the gentleness and the graciousness that belong to them by right of inheritance.