Throwing aside the switch, the gentleman ran in the house, laughed a half hour, and thus ended his only experiment at interfering in his wife’s domain.
His wife, “Miss Charlotte,” as the negroes called her, was gentle and indulgent to a fault, which made the incident more amusing.
It may appear singular, yet it is true, that our women, although having sufficient self-possession at home, and accustomed there to command on a large scale, became painfully timid if ever they found themselves in a promiscuous or public assemblage—shrinking from everything like publicity.
Still, these women, to whom a whole plantation looked up for guidance and instruction, could not fail to feel a certain consciousness of superiority, which, although never displayed or asserted in manner, became a part of themselves. They were distinguishable everywhere—for what reason, exactly, I have never been able to find out—for their manners were too quiet to attract attention. Yet a Captain on a Mississippi steamboat said to me: “I always know a Virginia lady as soon as she steps on my boat.”
“How do you know?” I asked, supposing he would say: “By their plain style of dress and antiquated breastpins.”
Said he: “I’ve been running a boat from Cincinnati to New Orleans for twenty-five years, and often have three hundred passengers from various parts of the world. But if there is a Virginia lady among them, I find it out in half an hour. They take things quietly, and don’t complain. Do you see that English lady over there? Well, she has been complaining all the way up the Mississippi river. Nobody can please her. The cabin-maid and steward are worn out with trying to please her. She says it is because the mosquitoes bit her so badly coming through Louisiana. But we are almost at Cincinnati now; haven’t seen a mosquito for a week, and she is still complaining!”
“Then,” he continued, “the Virginia ladies look as if they could not push about for themselves, and for this reason I always feel like giving them more attention than the other passengers.”
“We are inexperienced travelers,” I replied.
And these remarks of the Captain convinced me—I had thought it before—that Virginia women should never undertake to travel, but content themselves with staying at home. However, such restriction would have been unfair, unless they had felt like the Parisian who, when asked why the Parisians never traveled, replied: “Because all the world comes to Paris!”