Among the numberless tyrants, in and out
of office, who rule the sovereign American
people with rods of iron, none can compare—
whether it respects the despotic rigour of
their rule, or the patient submissiveness of their
subjects—with their High Mightinesses, the
innkeepers. Steamboat captains, and stage-proprietors
may, in their vanity, contest with
them the claim to superiority in power; and,
indeed, the undoubted privileges both these
classes possess to maim and kill their customers
at will, would seem to put them at the
head of the powerful; but no honest, disinterested
man who will consider all the circumstances,
the power of the lordly Boniface
over the comfort of his lodgers, and the uniform
despotism of his rule, can hesitate to
award the palm to their rivals. In other

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lands, circumstances have degraded the lords
of the spigot into a condition of subservience
and vassalage to society; and they are insultingly
regarded, and, incredible as it may appear,
they even regard themselves as the servants
of the public. Here, in this happy republic,
where all are free but the people, they
have assumed their proper attitude, as masters
of their patrons, whom they rule with
autocratic severity grievous to behold and
lamentable to suffer. High and low, the
princes of metropolitan hotels and the kings
of the log-cabin tavern on the wayside, they
know their power, and exercise it. The metropolitan
potentates, indeed, sometimes affect
a certain citizen-kinglike humility, and govern
with decency and suavity; while it may
be observed of the others, their compeers,
that the lower you descend in rank among
them, the more savage and irrespective becomes
their tyranny. Thus, with the lord of
your town inn, you may sometimes venture
upon a little complaint of the cook and chamber-maid,
without fear of being knocked
down for impertinence; and, sometimes, in a
village hotel, you may prefer a little expostulation
on the subject of horse-meat and clean
sheets, without the absolute certainty of being

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turned into the streets. But even here we
must not expect always to find our dignitaries
in a good humour. The possession of
power is a constant provocative to the exercise
of it; and we know not when the monarch
may put on his robes of state, and shake
his sceptre of authority. It is but a little
while, as every body knows, since a royal
prince, with his whole cortége at his heels,
was turned out of doors, or at least refused
admission, by two different inkeepers, sceptre
in hand. It is true, that, in both these instances,
the royal personage was entirely unknown,
being mistaken, in the one case, for
an opera fiddler, in the other for something
equally insignificant; otherwise mine hosts
had been happy to kiss the dust from his
royal shoes, out of a mere republican respect
for greatness.

The king of the cabin—your true country
tavern-keeper—is quite another sort of person,
with whom to complain, to exhibit any
symptoms of rebellious discontent, is to awake
the sleeping lion. What cares he for your
fine coat, your long dangling watch-chain,
your gentlemanly swagger, your titles of distinction—
your Colonel or General, your Doctor,
your Reverend, your Honourable? You

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are, sir, his customer—a suitor for meat and
drink, which he graciously vouchsafes you,
taking no consideration therefor, except a
certain number of ninepences, or half-dollars,
together with a due addition of reverence
naturally belonging to the master of the house
that shelters you. His house, though every
chamber be reeking with mud and rain, is his
house, and if you don't like it, you may leave
it; his beds, though forty human souls, with
boots on, may have nestled betwixt the unchanged
sheets, doing battle all night with
Incubus and Succuba, in the shape of those
strange bedfellows with which misery makes
us acquainted, have harboured your betters,
and why therefore should you presume to
grumble? His table, plentifully or sparely covered
as the case may be, with uncatable eatables—
coffee made, or seeming to be made,
of burnt blankets, sodden bread, stale bacon
and palpitating chickens, greasy potatoes and
withered turnip-tops—is the table that contents
him, and if you don't like it you may
go—to a place entirely unmentionable!

Truly, your republican innkeeper is the most
mighty of tyrants. You may find him, sometimes,
a very amiable personage, as great
men sometimes will be; but take heed you

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trifle not with his amiableness; for, verily, he
is not a person to be trifled with by any rabblement
traveller, for whom he does not care
the snap of his independent fingers—no,
not he.

In truth, the common country tavern-keepers—
those especially in new regions, or at
a distance from the great towns—are, for the
most part, mere farmers, who have been
driven by sheer necessity (not poverty) to
open their houses to the public. In very few
parts of the land is the country densely
enough settled, and the travelling sufficiently
great, to support lines of taverns along the
roads at convenient distances. The farmer
must hang out the bush and play the landlord,
or be eaten up by his hospitality. He
knows nothing of cooking or housekeeping
beyond what he has been accustomed to in
his own family, and he cares nothing about
learning; in half the instances, he would prefer
the traveller's room to his company: it is
not therefore surprising his hotel should not
be the best in the world, nor himself the most
obliging of landlords.

With this condition of things prevailing, it
is evident one must not look for any exemplifications
of the charming rural hostelries,

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the little hawthorn-crowned alehouse, so long
embalmed in the pages of English poets and
novelists, with its proper familiars, the facetious
host, his buxom wife, and trim daughter,
all obsequious, bustling, eager to make
themselves, and their house, and every thing
in it, agreeable to your honour. You cannot
here say, with any propriety, you will take
your ease in your inn, that being the privilege
solely of its master; nor can you have
any greater expectation of comfort, which is
an article seldom put down in the bill of fare.
In brief, one should expect nothing; and to
the inexperienced traveller I recommend the
maxim which observation has shown me to
be productive of the best effects in mollifying
evils, as well as preventing a hundred inconveniences
that might otherwise occur:—Be
submissive; graciously receive, thankfully
suffer, pay your money, and depart in peace.

It was once my fate to pass a night in a
certain wayside caravansary, among the
mountains of Virginia, a lowly and logly
habitation, from whose mean appearance no
one would have inferred the majestic spirit
of the ruler within; up—or rather down to
which—for it stood at the bottom of a hill—
one fine evening in September, rolled a

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mailcoach, well crammed with passengers, of
whom I, for my sins, was one. We numbered
twelve souls in all, nine inside, and three
out; of which latter group, I, being somewhat
a valetudinarian, was honoured with a seat
beside his highness of the whip; while my two
companions, the one a Mississippian, the
other a varmint, as he called himself, of Tennessee,
sat gallantly upon the top, where
they rolled and pitched about, as we thundered
down the rocky road, in a manner admirable
to behold—or, as the Mississippian
expressed it, “like two short tailed dogs in
a boiling pot”—a resemblance that was
somewhat the stronger for the tremendous
bow-woughs and yelpings, with which he—
sometimes assisted by the Tennessean—beguiled
the weariness of the way.

Certainly, there never was a jollier set of
rantipole personages got together in a mailstage
before. Besides the Mississippian yelping
on the top, there was another of the same
tribe on the inside, who could imitate the
braying of an ass to perfection—a melody
which he kept up in rivalry with his friend
and partner aloft. Add to these an Alabamian
who sang negro songs; a Rock River
Illinois, who whooped like an Indian; a

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Texian that played the mestang, or wild horse of
the prairies, and, besides kicking the bottom
nearly from the stage, neighed and whinneyed
till the very team-horses on the road responded
to the note; and five others who did
nothing but scream and laugh to fill up the
concert; and you have before you a set of the
happiest madbrained roisterers that ever astonished
the monarch of a stage house.

At this place we were destined to sup and
lodge; and accordingly, in due course of time,
we were all seated at the board, where we
had the satisfaction of being tyrannized over
both by mine host and mine hostess, the one
glum yet facetious, the other ugly as ill-temper,
and haughty as a princess. There was
nothing at all remarkable in the supper, which
was no better nor worse than usual, except
the total absence of that sine qua non of a
Virginia table, fried chickens—and, indeed,
of chickens in every shape, there not being
so much as a wing or claw on the table.
This omission producing a gentle interrogatory,
somewhat in the tone of expostulation,
from one of the Mississippians, (who, as well
as all the other travellers, it is proper to say,
was now playing the part of a very modest
well behaved young gentleman,) mine host

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very wittily gave us to understand, “it was
all our own fault, seeing that the diabolical
noise we had made, while approaching the
house, had scared all his fowls into the mountains.”
This, the Mississipppian declared,
“reminded him of Captain Dobbs's chickens in
Kentucky, which, he had the Captain's own
words for it, no sooner caught sight of a
traveller approaching, than they immediately
took to their heels; being well aware, from
long experience, as Captain Dobbs said, that
the visit of a stranger was certain death to
them.”

Before we had finished supper, a thirteenth
guest made his appearance—a tall rawboned
Yankee pedler, it seemed, who drove up in
his little wagon through a shower that had
begun to fall, and presently entered the supper-room,
bearing a pair of saddle-bags which
he laid beside him with great care, as if afraid
its contents should be injured, if placed out
of his protection. He had a very meek, solemn,
unpresuming, solitary look, and rather
sneaked into than took a chair at the foot of
the table; where he waited very submisively
for the cup of coffee, which my landlady
deigned, after sundry contemptuous looks,
and five minutes of delay, to send him. On

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the whole, he did not seem to produce any
more favourable impression upon my fellow
travellers, who left him to consume his chickenless
supper by himself, while they proceeded
to the bar-room to resolve a doubt which
had entered the head of the Mississippian,
Captain's Dobbs's friend—to wit, whether the
thunder of their approach had not killed all
the mint-plants, and so deprived them of their
juleps. This was fortunately proved not to
be the case: the young gentlemen concocted
their sleeping draughts, smoked their segars,
settled the affairs of the nation, and then,
having received a hint that such was the will
and pleasure of the landlord, ascended to the
traveller's room to seek their beds.

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