e in the market.
The old man, though lame, was no sluggard. He was a man that made his
crutches do him good service. He was always on the alert, looking up the
sick, and all such as were supposed to need his counsel. His remedial
prescriptions embraced four articles. For diseases of the body, _Epsom
salts and castor oil;_ for those of the soul, _the Lord's Prayer_, and
_hickory switches_!

I was not long at Col. Lloyd's before I was placed under the care of
Doctor Issac Copper. I was sent to him with twenty or thirty other
children, to learn the "Lord's Prayer." I found the old gentleman seated
on a huge three-legged oaken stool, armed with several large hickory
switches; and, from his position, he could reach--lame as he was--any
boy in the room. After standing awhile to learn what was expected of us,
the old gentleman, in any other than a devotional tone, commanded us
to kneel down. This done, he commenced telling us to say everything
he said. "Our Father"--this was repeated after him with promptness
and uniformity; "Who art in heaven"--was less promptly and uniformly
repeated; and the old gentleman paused in the prayer, to give us a short
lecture upon the consequences of inattention, both immediate and future,
and especially those more immediate. About these he was absolutely
certain, for he held in his right hand the means of bringing all his
predictions and warnings to pass. On he proceeded with the prayer; and
we with our thick tongues and unskilled ears, followed him to the best
of our ability. This, however, was not sufficient to please the old
gentleman. Everybody, in the south, wants the privilege of whipping
somebody else. Uncle Isaac shared the common passion of his country,
and, therefore, seldom found any means of keeping his disciples in
order short of flogging. "Say everything I say;" and bang would come
the switch on some poor boy's undevotional head. _"What you looking at
there"--"Stop that pushing"_--and down again would come the lash.{56}

The whip is all in all. It is supposed to secure obedience to the
slaveholder, and is held as a sovereign remedy among the slaves
themselves, for every form of disobedience, temporal or spiritual.
Slaves, as well as slaveholders, use it with an unsparing hand. Our
devotions at Uncle Isaac's combined too much of the tragic and comic, to
make them very salutary in a spiritual point of view; and it is due
to truth to say, I was often a truant when the time for attend