make to them these representations of their slaves, are giving them airings in their coaches, making parties for them, taking them on excursions of pleasure, lavishing upon them their choicest hospitalities, and urging them to protract indefinitely their stay—­what more natural than for the flattered guest to admire such hospitable people, catch their spirit, and fully sympathize with their feelings toward their slaves, regarding with increased disgust and aversion those who can habitually tease and worry such loveliness and generosity[23].  After the visitor had been in contact with the slave-holding spirit long enough to have imbibed it, (no very tedious process,) a cuff, or even a kick administered to a slave, would not be likely to give him such a shock that his memory would long retain the traces of it.  But lest we do these visitors injustice, we will suppose that they carried with them to the south humane feelings for the slave, and that those feelings remained unblunted; still, what opportunity could they have to witness the actual condition of the slaves?  They come in contact with the house-servants only, and as a general thing, with none but the select ones of these, the parlor-servants; who generally differ as widely in their appearance and treatment from the cooks and scullions in the kitchen, as parlor furniture does from the kitchen utensils.  Certain servants are assigned to the parlor, just as certain articles of furniture are selected for it, to be seen—­and it is no less ridiculous to infer that the kitchen scullions are clothed and treated like those servants who wait at the table, and are in the presence of guests, than to 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