commercial purposes, and tells what he has learned by experience of the custom of the country:
"It is customary in travelling through this country, where towns are
few and taverns scarce and vile, to stop at the planters' houses along the
road, and pay for your bed and board in the morning just as if you had
stayed at an inn. The custom is rather repugnant to our Old World notions
of hospitality, but it appears to me an excellent one for both the host and
his guest. The one feels less bored by demands upon his kindness, as soon
as it ceases to be merely a kindness to comply with them, and the other
has no fear about intruding or being troublesome when he knows he will
have to pay for his entertainment. It is rarely, however, that the entrée
can be obtained into the houses of wealthy planters in this way. They
will not be bothered by your visits, and, if you apply to them, have no hesitation
in politely passing you on to such of their neighbours as have less
money or more generosity."
The same writer afterwards relates the following experience:—
"About nineteen miles from Canton, I sought lodging at nightfall at a
snug house on the roadside, inhabited by an old gentleman and his two
daughters, who possessed no slaves and grew no cotton, and whose two
sons had been killed in the Mexican war, and who, with the loudest professions
of hospitality, cautiously refrained from giving himself any personal
trouble in support of them. He informed me that there was corn in
the husk in an almost inaccessible loft, there was fodder in an un-get-at-able
sort of a cage in the yard, water in a certain pond about half a mile
off, and a currycomb in a certain hole in the wall. Having furnished me
with this intelligence, he left me to draw my own conclusions as to what
my conduct ought to be under the circumstances."
A naturalist, the author of a well-known standard work,
who has made several tours of observation in the Slave
States, lately confided to me that he believed that the popular
report of Southern hospitality must be a popular romance,
for never, during all his travels in the South, had he chanced
to be entertained for a single night, except by gentlemen to
whom he was formally presented by letter, or who had previously
been under obligations to him, without paying for it
in money, and to an amount quite equal to the value received.
By the wealthier, a night's entertainment had been frequently
