At the commencement of my itinerant life, on leaving the families where I had spent a night or taken a meal, I used to propose to pay them, and ask for my bill; but I found this gave offense. Many seemed to regard it as a reflection on their generosity for me to intimate or suppose that they would take pay for entertaining a preacher. I therefore adopted a formula that saved me from all danger of wounding their feelings, and relieved my character from all suspicion of a disposition to avoid the payment of my bills. It was as follows: When about to leave a family, I said to them, "I am indebted to you for a night's entertainment," to which the general response was: "Not at all, sir. Come and stay with us again, whenever you pass this way."
It was a very rare occurrence that I was permitted to cancel my indebtedness by paying for what I had received.
In thanking them for their hospitality, as of course I always did on leaving them, they made me feel that I had conferred a favor rather than incurred an obligation by staying with them.
For years it was my custom to apply for entertainment at any house wherever night overtook me, and I invariably received a cordial welcome. This application for entertainment was always made according to the custom of the people, and in their own vernacular, which I will illustrate by an example.
In my horseback-journeyings I had reached the tall, dense, heavy forests of the bottom-lands of the Mississippi River, about a dozen miles from the Father of Waters. As the sun was about setting, I came upon a large "dead'ning," where the underbrush had been cut out and burned off, the large trees had been girdled and had died, and a crop of corn had been raised among the dead forest-trees, before the new-comer in this wilderness had been able to completely clear a field around his newly-erected log-cabin. Turning off from the corduroy-road upon which I had been traveling, I took a footpath, and, following that, was soon as near the cabin as a high rail-fence would allow me to approach on horseback. A short distance from this log-cabin was a still smaller one occupied by a colored aunty and her family, and used for a kitchen; and not far off still another log-building, used for a barn and stable.
The most of my readers in the older sections of the country will suppose that I had now only to dismount, hitch my horse, climb the fence, rap at the door, and so gain admittance to my resting-place for the night. Far otherwise. Only the most untraveled and inexperienced in the Brush would undertake so rash an experiment.
Sitting upon my horse, I called out in a loud voice, "Hello there!" That call was for the same purpose that the city pastor mounts the stone steps and rings the bell at the door of his parishioner. It was rather more effective.
A large pack of hounds and various other kinds of dogs responded with a barking chorus, a group of black pickaninnies rushed from the adjacent kitchen, followed to the door by their sable mother, with arms a-kimbo and hands fresh from mixing the pone or corn-dodger for the family supper; all, with distended eyes and mouth, and shining ivory, staring at the stranger with excited and pleased curiosity. At almost the same instant, the mistress of the incipient plantation approached the door of her cabin, stockingless and shoeless, with a dress of woolsey woven in her own loom by her own hands, and cut and made by her own skill, with face not less pleased and excited than the others, and her cordial greeting of "How d'y, stranger—how d'y, sir? 'Light, sir! [alight]—'light, sir!"
Remaining upon my horse, I replied: "I am a stranger in these parts, madam. I have ridden about fifty miles since morning and am very tired. Can I get to stay with you to-night, madam?"
"Oh, yes," she replied, promptly, "if you can put up with our rough fare. We never turn anybody away."