Page:The White Slave, or Memoirs of a Fugitive.djvu/277

 purgation at Richmond. I had taken care to secure the good graces of this driver, who was a very shrewd fellow, a Yankee from Maine, and who gave me such an excellent character to the landlord, as, together with a little prudent dissimulation on my part, secured me from the danger of fresh annoyances. The old story of having, during a former tour some twenty years before, enjoyed the hospitality of Carleton Hall and Poplar Grove, served as an excuse for wishing to visit those plantations, and for inquiring about their former and present inhabitants. Of their former possessors, Mr Carleton and Mrs Montgomery, I was able to learn but little. Mr Carleton had adopted the common resource of emigration to the south-west. The Montgomerys were gone, it was said, to Charleston, but nobody knew any thing more of them. Both plantations, I was told, belonged at present to a Mr Mason, a very odd sort of a gentleman, who would, no doubt, be very glad to see me.

I slept that night at the tavern, or rather tried to sleep, but, disturbed as I was by the singing of mosquitoes, the barking of dogs, and what was infinitely worse, the sound of the handmills with which the slaves of the establishment were busy all night in preparing their next day's allowance of meal, with but little success. No sooner did I sink into a doze, than that well-remembered sound mingled with my dreams, and I began to imagine it was myself who was grinding.

Rising in the morning unrefreshed, I proceeded on horseback to Carleton Hall.. Having introduced myself as once the guest of the former proprietor, I received, according to the hospitable custom of the south, where the leisure of the planters makes them always eager for company, a very cordial and friendly welcome. Mr Mason I found to be a gentleman, in manners, education, and sentiment, such as would do honor to any part of the world. In the course of the week that I remained his guest, I learnt from him that his father, a man of natural energy, who had raised