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4 GEOtifilH scenes. By Judge Augustus Baldlvin Longstreet. The Weekly Jeffersonian begins to day 'the serial publication of that mel low old classic, “Georgia Scenes,” written by Judge Augustus Baldwin Ixmgstreet. No writer has ever more faithfully portrayed the manners and customs of a people than Judge Long street in this delightful volume. It was a favorite of our fathers and grandfathers, but a generation is com ing on which knows it not. We feel that The Weekly Jeffersonian is ren dering a genuine service to its readers in rescuing this Southern classic from oblivion. Each chapter complete in itself, and yet the whole is bound together by a common in terest which gives it unity. Judge Longstreet was born in Au gusta, Ga., in 1790. He was graduat ed from Yale, and, after practicing law, became a Judge of the Supe rior Court in 1822. After several years on the bench, he resumed the practice of his profession and then Preface to the First Edition. The following sketches were writ ten rather in ‘the hope that chance would bring them to light -when time 'would give then an interest, than in ithe belief 'that they would afford any interest to thei readers of the present day. I knew, however, that the chance of their surviving the au thor would be increased in propor tion to their popularity upon their first appearance; and, therefore, I used some little art in order to rec ommend them to the readers of my own times. They consist of noth ing more than fanciful combinations of real incidents and characters; and throwing into those* scenes, which would be otherwise dull and insipid, some personal incident or adventure of my own, real or imaginary, as it would best suit my purpose; usually real, but happening at different times and under different circumstances from those in which they are here represented. I have not always, how ever, taken this liberty. Some of the scenes are as literally true as the frailties of memory would allow them to be. I commenced the pub lication of them, in one of the ga zettes of the State, rather more than a year ago; and I was not more plelased than astonished to find that they were well received by readers generally. For the last six months I have been importuned by persons from all quarters of the State to give them to the public in the present form. This volume is purely a con cession to their entreaties. From private considerations, I was ex tremely desirous of concealing the author, and, the more effectually to do so, I wrote under two signatures. These have now become t 6 closely interwoven with the sketches to be separated from them, without an ex pense of time and trouble which I am unwilling to incur. Hall is the writer of those sketches in which men appear as the principal actors, and Baldwin of those in which wom en are the prominent figures. For the “Company Drill” I am indebted to a friend, of whose labors I would took up editorial work in Augusta, where he established The Sentinel, which was merged with The Chroni cle. In 1838 he became a Methodist Minister, and in a year was made president of Emory College. At dif ferent periods he was engaged in col lege work in Louisiana, Mississippi, and iSouth Carolina. He died in Ox ford, Misa., in September, 1870. He had a reputation as a speaker and as a vehement States’ Rights man. He was a voluminous writer but his hame is based on a single book, tonojieorgia Scenes,” originally pub lished in newspapers and afterwards issued in book form in the South. They were finally published in New in 1840, and attracted great attention. After entering the min istry the author is said to have dis owned the second edition and tried to destroy the first. A generation of appreciative readers feel) ful that he did not succeed. gladly have availed myself oftener. The reader will find in the object of the sketches an apology for the mi nuteness of detail into which some of them run, and for the introduc tion of some things into them which would have been excluded were they merely the creations of fancy. I have not had it in my power to superintend the publication of them, though they issue from a' press in the immediate vicinity of my resi dence. I discovered that, if the work was delayed until I could have an opportunity of examining the proof-sheets, it would linger in the press until the expenses (already large) would become intolerable. Consequently there may be many ty pographical errors among them, for which I must crave the reader’s in dulgence. I cannot conclude these introduc tory remarks without reminding those who have taken exceptions to the coarse, inelegant and sometimes ungrammatical language which the writer represents himself as occa sionally using, that it is language accommodated to the capacity of the person to whom he represents him self as speaking. THE AUTHOR. GEORGIA THEATRICS. If my memory fail me not the 10th of June, 1809, found me, at about 11 o’clock in the forenoon, as cending a long and gentle slope in what was called “The Dark Corner” of Lincoln. I believe it took its name from the moral darkness which reigned over that portion of the country at the time of which I am speaking. If in this point of view it was but a shade darker than the rest of the county it was inconceiv ably dark. If any man can name a trick or sin which had not been committed at the time of which I am speaking, in the very focus of all the county’s illumination (Lin colnton), he must himsejf be the most inventive of the tricky, and the very Judas of sinners. Since that time, however (all humor aside). THE WEEKLY JEFFERSONIAN. Lincoln has become a living proof “that light shineth in darkness.” Could I venture to mingle the solemn with the ludicrous, even for the pur poses of honorable contrast, I could adduce from this county instances of the most numerous and wonderful transitions, from vice and folly to virtue and holiness, which have ever, perhaps, been witnessed since the days of the apostolic ministry. So much, lest it should be thought by some that what I am about to relate is- characteristic of the county in which it occurred. Whatever may be said of the mor al condition of the Dark Corner at the time just mentioned its natural condition was anything but dark. It smiled in all the charms of spring; and spring borrowed a new charm from its undulating grounds, its lux uriant woodlands, its sportive streams, its vocal birds, and its blushing flowers. Rapt with the enchantment of the season and the scenery around me, I was slowly rising the slope, when 1 was startled by loud, profane, and boisterous voices, which seemed to proceed from a thick covert of un dergrowth about two hundred yards in the advance of me, and about one hundred to the right of my road. “You kin, kin you?” “Yes, I kin, and am able to do it! 800-00-oo! Oh, wake snakes, and walk your chalks! Brimestone and —fire! Don’t hold me, Nick iStoval! The sight’s made up, and let’s go at it. my soul, if I don’t jump down his throat, and gallop every chitterling out of him before you can say 1 quit ’! ” “Now, Nick, don’t hold him! Jist let the wild-cat come, and I’ll tame him. Ned’ll see me a fair fight,won’t you, Ned?” “Oh, yes; I’ll see you a fair fight, blast my old shoes if I don’t!” “That’s sufficient, as Tom Haynes said when he saw the elephant. Now let him come.” Thus they went on, with countless oaths interspersed, which I dare not even hint at, and with much that I could not distinctly hear. In Mer cy’s name, thought I, what band of ruffians has selected this holy season and this heavenly retreat for such pandemonian riots! I quickened my gait, and had come nearly opposite to the thick grove whence the noise proceeded, when my eye caught in distinctly, and at intervals, through the foliage of the dwarf-oaks and hickories which intervened, glimpses of a man or men, who seemed to be in a violent struggle;* and I could occasionally catch those deep-drawn, emphatic oaths which men in con flict utter when they deal blows. I dismounted and hurried to the spot with all speed. I had overcome about half the space which separated it from me, when I saw the combatants come to the ground, and, after a short struggle, I saw the uppermost one (for I could not see the other) make a heavy plunge with both his thumbs, and at the same instant T heard a cry in the accent of keenest torture, “Enough! My eye’s out!” I was so completely horrorstruck, that I stood transfixed for a moment to the spot where the-ery met me. The accomplices in the hellish deed which had been perpetrated had all fled at my approach; at least I suppose so, for they were not to “Now, blast your soul,” said the victor (a eighteen years old) as he rosW ’’A; ’’ the ground, “come cuttin’ shines ’bout me agin, next time I come to the Courthouse, will you!” At this moment he saw me for the first time. He looked excessively embarrassed, and was moving off, when I called to him, in a tone im boldened by the saeredness of my office and the iniquity of his crime, “Come back, you brute! and assist me in relieving your fellow-mortal, whom you have ruined forever!” My rudeness subdued his embar rassment in an instant; and, with a taunting curl of the nose, he re plied, “You needn’t kick before you’re spurr’d. There aba "'t nobody there, nor ha’nt been, nother. I was jist seein’ how I could ’a’ font.” So saying, he bounded to his plough, which stood in the corner of tb** in* fence about fifty yards beypnd battle ground. And, would you believe it, genne reader! His report was true. All that I had heard and seen was noth ing more nor less than a Lincoln re hearsal; in which the youth who had just left me had played all the parts of all the characters in a Courthouse fight. I -went to the ground from which he had risen, and there were the prints of his two thumbs, plunged up to -the balls in the mellow earth, about the distance of a man’s eyes apart; and the ground around was broken up as if two stags had been engaged upon it. HALL. THE VALUE OF REFORMATORIES. Because a man opposes a reform atory for youthful criminals does not always mean that he is hard-hearted. It may be that he has old fogy ideas and is living partly in the past. A correspondent to the Waxhaw Enter prise tells of some sad cases, that wouldn’t be so sad if there had been a reformatory. These are only a few out of many similar cases: “Twenty years ago a poor illegitimate boy, badly clothed, stole a pair of pants worth about $1.50 from a merchant at Monroe. He was tried, convicted and sent to the state prison twelve months. From the day he returned until now he has kept the law, so far as I know. I saw him go to the bal lot box, ticket in hand, to exercise his political freedom. But a chal lenge stared him in the face. The poor fellow put down the ticket and walked away sorrowful. North Car olina says to that poor fellow, ‘You shall not vote, but you must pay tax, if it takes the last mouthful of your bread.’ ” I saw two boys tried in the courts of Union county. They were about thirteen and fifteen years of age respectively, and were tried for breaking into the dinner buckets of some road hands. I learned that the mother of the poor boys was dead and that there had been trouble when the next mamma came along, and so the boys resloved to run away. The jury found them guilty and when the judge sentenced them to the roads it not only brought tears to their old father’s eyes but to the eyes of Mr. Jerome (their coun sel) as well. Today in our state prison there is a poor motherless girl, twelve years of age, from Cabar rus county who killed a man whose object was her ruin. Her sentence was twelve years. What will that girl be at the expiration of her term? —Marshallville, N. C.» “Our Home.”