infer that the kitchen is set out with sofas, ottomans, piano-fortes,
and full-length mirrors, because the parlor is. But the house-slaves
are only a fraction of the whole number. The _field-hands_ constitute
the great mass of the slaves, and these the visitors rarely get a
glimpse at. They are away at their work by day-break, and do not
return to their huts till dark. Their huts are commonly at some
distance from the master's mansion, and the fields in which they
labor, generally much farther, and out of sight. If the visitor
traverses the plantation, care is taken that he does not go alone; if
he expresses a wish to see it, the horses are saddled, and the master
or his son gallops the rounds with him; if he expresses a desire to
see the slaves at work, his conductor will know _where_ to take him,
and _when_, and _which_ of them to show; the overseer, too, knows
quite too well the part he has to act on such occasions, to shock the
uninitiated ears of the visitors with the shrieks of his victims. It
is manifest that visitors can see only the least repulsive parts of
slavery, inasmuch as it is wholly at the option of the master, what
parts to show them; as a matter of necessity, he can see only the
_outside_--and that, like the outside of doorknobs and andirons is
furbished up to be _looked at_. So long as it is human nature to wear
_the best side out_, so long the northern guests of southern
slaveholders will see next to nothing of the reality of slavery. Those
visitors may still keep up their autumnal migrations to the slave
states, and, after a hasty survey of the tinsel hung before the
curtain of slavery, without a single glance behind it, and at the
paint and varnish that _cover up_ dead men's bones, and while those
who have hoaxed them with their smooth stories and white-washed
specimens of slavery, are tittering at their gullibility, they return
in the spring on the same fool's-errand with their predecessors,
retailing their lesson, and mouthing the praises of the masters, and
the comforts of the slaves. They now become village umpires in all
disputes about the condition of the slaves, and each thence forward
ends all controversies with his oracular, "I've _seen_, and sure I
ought to know."

[Footnote 23: Well saith the Scripture, "A gift blindeth the eyes." The
slaves understand this, though the guest may not; they know very well
that they have no sympathy to expect from their master's guests; that
the good che