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 cheer of the "big house," and the attentions shown them, will
generally commit them in their master's favor, and against themselves.
Messrs. Thome and Kimball, in their late work, state the following
fact, in illustration of this feeling among the negro apprentices in
Jamaica.

"The governor of one of the islands, shortly after his arrival, dined
with one of the wealthiest proprietors. The next day one of the
negroes of the estate said to another, "De new gubner been
_poison'd_." "What dat you say?" inquired the other in astonishment,
"De gubner been _poison'd_! Dah, now!--How him poisoned?" "_Him eat
massa's turtle soup last night_," said the shrewd negro. The other
took his meaning at once; and his sympathy for the governor was
turned into concern for himself, when he perceived that the
poison was one from which he was likely to suffer more than his
excellency."--_Emancipation in the West Indies_, p. 334.]

But all northern visitors at the south are not thus easily gulled.
Many of them, as the preceding pages show, have too much sense to be
caught with chaff.

We may add here, that those classes of visitors whose representations
of the treatment of slaves are most influential in moulding the
opinions o