"Yes, where would you recommend me to stop?"
"Why, see here, Massa, just take a correspontal view of dem primsis, and den ax dis niggar which am de best hotel? We don't got no hotel in dis town. You call dat house a hotel! Yah! yah! yah!"
"Well, but uncle, you do n't mean to say you have no hotel?"
"Yes, I does mean to make dat statement for a solemn fac'. Massa, do you tink I do n't know what am a hotel? I do n't come from old Ferginy for nothin'. White folks can't fool dis child. Whar 's de Gen'l Washington? Whar's de Gen'l Jackson? Talk about a hotel whar you do n't see none ob dem great gemmen hangin' up fore de door!"
I soon discovered that my old colored friend was somewhat facetious, and prided himself upon once having lived in Old Virginia, where the "Mansion House" was honored by the "Father of his Country," or the "Hero of New-Orleans" to watch over it in all kinds of weather. Returning to the charge with,
"Well, uncle, I see you were not brought up among 'poor white folks,' so here is a picayune for you to drink the health of
Eat parch corn and lie by the fire.’
Now tell me where can I get accommodations for the night?"
Unluckily for me, this last speech touched a chord deep down in the old man's heart, and instead of giving me an answer, his memory was wandering back to happier days. He seemed determined to overwhelm me with questions in turn.
"O lossey Massa, I'aint hearn dem delishus words since dese twenty years. Oh! where did you come from? Did you ever see my boy, Jim Sampson? O Jim! Jim! you could wait on de gemmen! You could make de boots shine like two puter-dollars stuck in a mud-hole! O Jim! if de old man could just see him once more 'fore he dies!
I was loth to break the old man's soliloquy. It was so natural, unaffected, deep, and touching—and, alas! what a comment upon
