In the warm sun of the southern morning the great plantation lay asthough half-asleep, dozing and blinking at the advancing day. Theplantation house, known in all the country side as the Big House, restedcalm and self-confident in the middle of a wide sweep of cleared lands,surrounded immediately by dark evergreens and the occasional primevaloaks spared in the original felling of the forest. Wide and ramblinggalleries of one height or another crawled partially about the expansesof the building, and again paused, as though weary of the attempt tocircumvent it. The strong white pillars, rising from the ground floorstraight to the third story, shone white and stately, after the oldSouthern fashion, that Grecian style, simplified and made suitable toprovincial purses by those Adams brothers of old England who first setthe fashion in early American architecture. White-coated, with wide,cool, green blinds, with ample and wide-doored halls, and deep, lowwindows, the Big House, here in the heart of the warm southland, wasabove all things suited to its environment. It was all so safe and surethat there was no need for anxiety. Life here was as it had been forgenerations, even for the generation following the upheaval of the CivilWar.