A few minutes afterwards, one of the girls slunk in and stood behind me, as far as possible from her mistress. Presently, however, she was discovered.
“You Bet, you there? Come here! come here to me! close to me! (Slap, slap, slap.) Now, why don’t you stay in here? (Slap, slap, slap, on the side of the head.) I know! you want to be out in the kitchen with them Indians! (Slap, slap, slap.) Now see if you can stay here.” (Slap!) The other girl didn’t come at all, and was forgotten.
As soon as supper was over my hostess exclaimed, “Now, you Bet, stop crying there, and do you go right straight home; mind you run every step of the way, and if you stop one minute in the kitchen you’d better look out. Begone!” During the time I was in the house she was incessantly scolding the servants, in a manner very disagreeable for me to hear, though they seemed to regard it very little.
The Indians, I learned, lived some miles away, and were hired to hoe cotton. I inquired their wages. “Well, it costs me about four bits (fifty cents) a day,” (including food, probably). They worked well for a few days at a time; were better at picking than at hoeing. “They don’t pick so much in a day as niggers, but do it better.” The women said they were good for nothing, and her husband had no business to plant so much cotton that he couldn’t ’tend it with his own slave hands.
While at table a young man, very dirty and sweaty, with a ragged shirt and no coat on, came in to supper. He was surly and rude in his actions, and did not speak a word; he left the table before I had finished, and lighting a pipe, laid himself at full length on the floor of the room to smoke. This was the overseer.
Immediately after supper the master told me that he was in the habit of going to bed early, and he would show me where I was to sleep. He did so, and left me without a candle. It was dark, and I did not know the way to the stables, so I soon went to bed. On a feather bed I did not enjoy much rest, and when I at last awoke and dressed, breakfast was just ready. I said I would go first to look after my horse, and did so, the planter following me. I found him standing in a miserable stall, in a sorry state; he had not been cleaned, and there were no cobs or other indications of his having been fed at all since he had been there. I said to my host—
“He has not been fed, sir!”
“I wonder! hain’t he? Well, I’ll have him fed. I s’pose the overseer forgot him.”
But, instead of going to the crib and feeding him at once himself, he returned to the house and blew a horn for a negro; when after a long time one came in sight from the cotton-fields, he called to him to go to the overseer for the key of the corn-crib and feed the gentleman’s horse, and asked me now to come to breakfast. The overseer joined us as a supper; nothing was said to him about my horse, and he was perfectly silent, and conducted himself like an angry or sulky man in all his actions. As before, when he had finished his meal, without waiting for others to leave the table, he lighted a pipe and lay down to rest on the floor. I went to the stable and found my horse had been supplied with seven poor ears of corn only. I came back to ask for more, but could find neither master nor overseer. While I was packing my saddle-bags preparatory to leaving, I heard my host call a negro to “clean that gentleman’s horse and bring him here.” As it was late, I did not interpose. While I was putting on the bridle, he took off the musquito tent attached to the saddle and examined it. I explained why I carried it.
“You won’t want it any more,” said he; “no musquitoes of any account where you are going now; you’d better give it to me, sir; I should like to use it when I go a-fishing; musquitoes are powerful bad in the swamp.” After some further solicitation, as I seldom used it, I gave it to him. Almost immediately afterwards he charged me a dollar for my entertainment, which I paid, notwithstanding the value of the tent was several times that amount. Hospitality to travellers is so entirely a matter of business with the common planters.