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NEGRO LIFE IN AMERICA. 87

nouse. Ifniggers is quiet, and don’t try to get off, they has good
times with me; and if they don’t, why, it’s thar fault, apd not
mine.” |

Tom assured Haley that he had no present intentions of running
off. In fact, the exhortation seemed rather a superfluous one to

~ q man with a great pair of iron fetters on his feet. But Mr. Haley

had got in the habit of commencing his relations with his stock
with little exhortations of this nature, calculated, as he deemed,
to inspire cheerfulness and confidence, and prevent the necessity
of any unpleasant scenes.

And here, for the present, we take our leave of Tom, to pursue
the fortunes of other characters in our story.

oor

CHAPTER XI.
IN WHICH PROPERTY GETS INTO AN IMPROPER STATE OF MIND.

Ir was late in a drizzly afternoon that a traveller alighted at
the door of a small country hotel, in the village of N——, in Ken-
tucky. In the bar-room he found assembled quite a miscellaneous
company, whom stress of weather had driven to harbour, and the
place presented the usual scenery of such re-unions. Great, tall,
raw-boned Kentuckians, attired in hunting-shirts, and trailing their
loose joints over a vast extent of territory, with the easy lounge
peculiar to the race—rifles stacked away in the corner, shot-
pouches, game-bags, hunting-dogs, and little negroes, all rolled
together in the corners—were the characteristic features in the
picture. At each end of the fireplace sat a long-legged gentleman,
with his chair tipped back, his hat on his head, and the heels of
his muddy boots reposing sublimely on the mantel-piece—a posi-
tion, we will inform our readers, decidedly favourable to the turn
of reflection. incident to western taverns, where travellers exhibit
a decided preference for this particular mode of elevating their
understandings.

Mine host, who stood behind the bar, like most of his country-
men, was great of stature, good-natured, and loose-jointed, with an
ryt shock of hair on his head, and a great tall hat on the top
of that.

In fact, everybody in the room bore on his head this charac-
teristic emblem of man’s sovereignty; whether it were felt hat,
palm-leaf, greasy beaver, or fine new chapeau, there it reposed
with true republican independence. In truth, it appeared to be
the characteristic mark of every individual. Some wore them
tipped. rakishly on one side—these were your men of humour,
jolly, free-and-easy dogs ; some had them jammed independently

 

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