efer drinking and gaming in their
absence.

I often used to amuse myself with fancying the different scene
which such a vessel would display in Europe. The noble length of
the gentlemen's cabin would be put into requisition for a dance,
while that of the ladies, with their delicious balcony, would be
employed for refreshments, instead of sitting down in two long
silent melancholy rows, to swallow as much coffee and beef-steak
as could be achieved in ten minutes. Then song and music would
be heard borne along by the midnight breeze; but on the Ohio,
when light failed to shew us the bluffs, and the trees, with
their images inverted in the stream, we crept into our little
cots, listening to the ceaseless churning of the engine, in hope
it would prove a lullaby till morning.

We were three days in reaching Wheeling, where we arrived at
last, at two o'clock in the morning, an uncomfortable hour to
disembark with a good deal of luggage, as the steam-boat was
obliged to go on immediately; but we were instantly supplied with
a dray, and in a few moments found ourselves comfortably seated
before a good fire, at an hotel near the landing-place; our
rooms, with fires in them, were immediately ready for us, and
refreshments brought, with all that sedulous attention which in
this country distinguishes a slave state. In making this
observation I am very far from intending to advocate the system
of slavery; I conceive it to be essentially wrong; but so far as
my observation has extended, I think its influence is far less
injurious to the manners and morals of the people than the
fallacious ideas of equality, which are so fondly cherished by
the working classes of the white population in America. That
these ideas are fallacious, is obvious, for in point of fact the
man possessed of dollars does command the services of the man
possessed of no dollars; but these services are given grudgingly,
and of necessity, with no appearance of cheerful goodwill on the
one side, or of kindly interest on the other. I never failed to
mark the difference on entering a slave state. I was immediately
comfortable, and at my ease, and felt that the intercourse
between me and those who served me, was profitable to both
parties and painful to neither.

It was not till I had leisure for more minute observation that I
felt aware of the influence of slavery upon the owners of slaves;
when I did, I confess I could not but think that the citizens of
t