[382] Collins, History of Kentucky, Vol. 2, pp. 634-636.
[383] Cotterill, History of Pioneer Kentucky, p. 245. Little, L. P., Ben Hardin, his Times and Contemporaries, p. 543.
[384] Buckingham, Eastern and Western States, Vol. 3: 7-8.
[385] Op. cit., Vol. 3: 8.
[386] Little, L. P., Ben Hardin, his Times and Contemporaries, pp. 541-2.
[387] A typical example of this has been related by one of Kentucky's distinguished sons:
"In the households where I was intimate the slaves were about on the same footing as the other members of the family; they were subjected to sudden explosions of the master's temper much as were his children. I well remember a frequent scene in my grandfather's house, where it was the custom that I should go every Sunday afternoon for counsel and instruction. They were at first somewhat fearsome occasions for a little lad thus to be alone with an aged and stately grandfather. I soon won his interest, in some measure by my fears, and came greatly to enjoy the intercourse, for he knew how to talk to a boy, and we became, in a way, boys together, in our sense of the funny side of things. It was the custom, too, for him to divide the session of three or four hours with a brief nap taken in his chair....
"As his rooms were near the negro quarter he would make ready for his siesta by sending forth the servantman who waited on him, bidding him tell the people that they were to keep quiet during the performance. I can see him now with his pig-tail hanging down behind the back of the easy chair and a handkerchief over his face as he courted slumber. For a minute or two it would be still, then the hidden varlets would be as noisy as before. Then the pig-tail would begin to twitch, and he would mutter: 'Jim, tell those people they must be still.' Again a minute of quiet, and once more the jabbering and shouting. Now with a leap he would clutch his long walking-stick and charge the crowd in the quarter, laying about him with amazing nimbleness, until all the offenders were run to their holes. Back he would come from his excursion and settle himself to sleep. I could see that his rage was merely on the surface and that he had used it for a corrective, for he evidently took care not to hurt anyone." Shaler's Autobiography, p. 37.
[388] Little, L. P., Ben Hardin, his Times and Contemporaries, p. 543.
[389] Shaler's Autobiography, pp. 36-37.