They listened with pleasure to my accounts of distant Europe, the sort of life people led there, the luxury of the rich and the misery of the poor, particularly in large towns, the general fondness for society, and the good qualities of many of all stations, high and low; they shook their heads and said, “The other side of the great ocean must be a curious place!” It was late when I rolled myself in a blanket before the fire, to sleep sweetly and calmly during the night. In the morning my headache returned, and shivering limbs announced the enemy. There was no time for delay; I buckled the girths with trembling hands, and went in to take leave: the kind folks had some hot coffee ready for me, which might delay but could not prevent the attack. I went on about three miles to the smithy, and explained my wishes, and then turned the horse’s head toward the house of Mr. Dunn: how I got there is more than I can say,--I have a faint remembrance of a piercing headache, and dreadful weakness--that I often lay upon the horse’s neck, when the gentle animal stood still, and did not move till I could sit upright again. Dunn’s house was about three miles from the smith’s; on arriving, I slipped off rather than dismounted. The old man soon saw what was the matter with me, and bringing out a glass of some green liquid, he made me take a good gulp of it: its excessive bitterness seemed to cut me in two, and I asked with horror what was the stuff he had given me. He laughed at the face I made, and told me it was something quite new and his own invention: it was bear’s gall and whiskey, and he was not a little proud of his medicine. I slept well during the night, and returned to S.’s next day. I was very sorry not to have been in better condition on the evening that I passed at Dunn’s, for he was a good old fellow, and very amusing with his dry stories.
On the evening of the 18th October, S. came back from Strong’s, where he had bought a couple of negro children, and brought them home on a led horse. One was a boy about fifteen years old, as black as pitch, and with a regular Ethiopian cast of countenance; as he crossed the threshold, he examined every one present, with a rapid glance of his large dark eyes, and then looked unconcernedly at all the furniture, &c., as if all that was of no consequence to him. The other was a little girl of about eleven, who seemed already to have gone through some hard work. When she saw so many strange faces, a tear glittered in her eyes: she had been sold away from her parents, whom she would probably never more behold, and stood an image of suppressed grief. The boy was from Maryland, had been taken by sea to New Orleans, and from thence brought here. He had been told that he had fallen to a kind master, and his countenance seemed to say that was enough, happen what might.