. . . that Sunday morning in 1833 . . . with the bells ringing peaceful and peremptory and a little cacophonous--the demoninations in concord though not in tune--and the ladies and children and house negroes to carry the parasols and flywhisks, and even a few men (the ladies moving in hoops among the miniature broadcloth of little boys and the pantalettes of little girls, in the skirts of the time when ladies did not walk but floated) when the other men sitting with their feet on the railing of the Holston House gallery looked up, and there the stranger was. He was already half way across the square when they saw him, on a big hard-ridden roan horse, man and beast looking as though they had been created out of thin air and set down in the bright morning sabbath sunshine in the middle of a tired foxtrot--face and horse that none of them had ever seen before, name that none of them had ever heard, and origin and purpose which some of them were never to learn. (pp. 23-24)

[From Absalom, Absalom!, Chapter 2
Pagination from Vintage International Edition, 1990]