"As large a one as you please. Go and remain just where you think best."
"How long shall I stay?"
"While the excitement lasts, if possible. Do you know how long you will stay? You will be back here some fine morning in just about two weeks."
"Wait and see."
Pondering upon the line of conduct best for the journey, I remembered the injunction of the immortal Pickwick: "It is always best on these occasions to do what the mob do!" "But," suggested Mr. Snodgrass, "suppose there are two mobs?" "Shout with the largest," replied Mr. Pickwick. Volumes could not say more. Upon this plan I determined to act—concealing my occupation, political views, and place of residence. It is not pleasant to wear a padlock upon one's tongue, for weeks, nor to adopt a course of systematic duplicity; but personal convenience and safety rendered it an inexorable necessity.
A Ride Through Kentucky.
On Tuesday, February 26th, I left Louisville, Kentucky, by the Nashville train. Public affairs were the only topic of conversation among the passengers. They were about equally divided into enthusiastic Secessionists, urging in favor of the new movement that negroes already commanded higher prices than ever before; and quasi Loyalists, reiterating, "We only want Kentucky to remain in the Union as long as she can do so honorably." Not a single man declared himself unqualifiedly for the Government.
A ride of five hours among blue, dreamy hills, feathered with timber; dense forests, with their drooping foliage and log dwellings, in the doors of which women and little girls were complacently smoking their pipes; great, hospitable farm-houses, in the midst of superb natural parks; tobacco plantations, upon which negroes of both sexes—the women in cowhide brogans, and faded frocks, with gaudy kerchiefs wrapped like turbans about their heads—were hoeing, and following the plow, brought us to Cave City.
I left the train for a stage-ride of ten miles to the Mammoth Cave Hotel. In the midst of a smooth lawn, shaded by stately oaks and slender pines, it looms up huge and white, with a long, low, one-story offshoot fronted by a deep portico, and known as "the Cottages."
The Curiosities of White's Cave.