“You are not going in the right direction to go to Mr. W.’s. The shortest way you can take to go there is, to go right back to the Court House.”
I told him I had just come out of the lane by the grocery on to the road. “Ah! well, I’ll tell you; you had better turn round, and keep right straight upon this road till you get to the Court House, and anybody can tell you, there, how to go.”
“How far is it, sir?”
“To the Court House?—not above a mile.”
“And to Mr. W.’s?”
“To Mr. W.’s, I should think it was as much as ten miles, and long ones, too.”
I rode to the Court House, which was a plain brick building in the centre of a small square, around which there were twenty or thirty houses, two of them being occupied as stores, one as a saddler’s shop, one had the sign of “Law Office” upon it; one was a jail; two were occupied by physicians, one other looked as if it might be a meeting-house or school-house, or the shop of any mechanic needing much light for his work, and two were “Hotels.” At one of these we stopped to dine; Jane had “corn and fodder” (they had no oats or hay in the stable), and I had ham and eggs (they had no fresh meat in the house). I had several other things, however, that were very good, besides the company of the landlady, who sat alone with me, at the table, in a long, dining hall, and was very pretty, amiable, and talkative.
In a course of apologies, which came in the place of soup, she gave me the clue to the assemblage of negroes I had seen at the mill. It was Christmas week; all the servants thought they must go, for at least one day, to have a frolic, and to-day (as luck would have it, when I was coming) her cook was off with some others; she did not suppose they’d be back till to-morrow, and then, likely as not, they’d be drunk. She did not think this custom, of letting servants go so, at Christmas, was a good one; niggers were not fit to be let to take care of themselves, anyhow. It was very bad for them, and she didn’t think it was right. Providence had put the servants into our hands to be looked out for, and she didn’t believe it was intended they should be let to do all sorts of wickedness, even if Christmas did come but once a year. She wished, for her part, it did not come but once in ten years.
(The negroes, that were husking maize near the cabin where the white man lived, were, no doubt, slaves, who had hired themselves out by the day, during the holiday-week, to earn a little money on their own account.)
In regard to the size of the dining-hall, and the extent of sheds in the stable-yard, the landlady told me that though at other times they very often did not have a single guest in a day, at “Court time” they always had more than they could comfortably accommodate. I judged, also, from her manners and the general appearance of the house, as well as from the charges, that, at such times, the company might be of a rather respectable character. The appearance of the other public-house indicated that it expected a less select patronage.