Page:The White Slave, or Memoirs of a Fugitive.djvu/276

 to Carleton Hall and Poplar Grove, which I intended next to visit. As the coach, which was little better than a sort of lumber wagon, drove up, there were collected about the tavern door a dozen or two of those idlers, several of them rather out at the elbows, and more than half of them decidedly tipsy, commonly to be found on that route, about the doors of such places. They were engaged in discussing, with most vehement gesticulations, what then seemed to be the only topic wherever I went — the wicked plot and conspiracy of the bloodthirsty abolitionists. One of them held in his hands a little tract, which had come directed to him through the post office, entitled, "Human Rights," the sight of which seemed to have upon him and his companions much the effect of the bite of a mad dog; for they were all more or less foaming at the mouth, and all seemed exceedingly anxious, if not to bite, at least to hang somebody. 'The man with the tract, as I was told, was a candidate for congress in that district. He seemed to suspect a little that the sending him this tract on human rights was a contrivance to damage him with the people, on the part of his rival, who had a brother living in New York; but the prevailing opinion appeared to be, that the tract was a bona fide abolition emissary, a sort of bombshell stuffed with sedition and murder, which might at any time explode; and though some wished to preserve it as a palpable proof of the reality of the abolition conspiracy, the prevailing opinion seemed to be, that it would be safest to burn it forthwith. Accordingly, amid oaths and execrations, and wishes that a dozen or two of the abolitionists were tied to it, it was solemnly deposited in the kitchen fire. Their hand thus in, the company, headed by the would-be member of congress, beset the coach, and insisted upon searching the mail bags for the detection of like dangerous missives. Nor could the driver protect his charge in any other way than by the most positive asseverations that the mail bags from the north had undergone a thorough search and