America in his travels, mentions that if you confide your
affairs and intentions when questioned, the Americans reciprocate that
confidence by relating their own. My own experience, however, did not
corroborate this view of the case, for, though loquacious in the
extreme, and gifted, so that to use a Yankee phrase, they would "talk a
dog's hind-leg off," they are in general cautious not to divulge their
secrets. To say the least of it, the habit of prying into the business
of others, is one totally unbecoming a well-ordered state of society,
which the American, speaking generally, is decidedly not. It is
extremely annoying, from the unpleasant feeling it excites, that you are
suspected if not watched (this applies forcibly to the slave districts);
and it is a habit that has arisen purely from the incongruity of society
at large on the American continent, and a want of that subdivision of
class that exists in Europe.

During my visits to the various hotels while I remained in Charleston,
for the purpose of collecting information, I was several times
interrogated in a barefaced manner by the visitors who frequent those
places, as to my politics, and especially as to my principles in regard
to the institution of slavery; now, as I was not unaware that my
intimacy with the gentleman of colour, which I have already referred to,
had got abroad, I was obliged to be extremely guarded in my replies on
such occasions. It was on one of these that I felt myself in great
hazard, for two individuals in the company were discussing with much
energy, the question of amalgamation (that is, marriage, contracted
between black and white men and women), and I was listening intently to
their altercation, when suddenly one of them, eyeing me with malicious
gaze, no doubt having noticed my attention to the colloquy, said,

"Your opinion, stranger, on this subject; I guess you understand it
torrably well, as you seem to be pretty hard on B----'s eldest
daughter." This unexpected sally rather alarmed me, for the name he
mentioned was that of my coloured friend I have before alluded to, and
whose daughter I had only met once, and that at her father's house.

I scarcely knew what to reply, but thought it best to put on a bold
face, so facing the man, I thanked him with much irony for the inuendo,
and said, it was a piece of impudence I thought very much like him from
what I had overheard.

This was said in a resolute tone, and the fellow quailed