Chapter 14

_Experience in St. Michael's_

THE VILLAGE--ITS INHABITANTS--THEIR OCCUPATION AND LOW
PROPENSITIES CAPTAN{sic} THOMAS AULD--HIS CHARACTER--HIS SECOND
WIFE, ROWENA--WELL MATCHED--SUFFERINGS FROM HUNGER--OBLIGED TO
TAKE FOOD--MODE OF ARGUMENT IN VINDICATION THEREOF--NO MORAL CODE
OF FREE SOCIETY CAN APPLY TO SLAVE SOCIETY--SOUTHERN CAMP
MEETING--WHAT MASTER THOMAS DID THERE--HOPES--SUSPICIONS ABOUT
HIS CONVERSION--THE RESULT--FAITH AND WORKS ENTIRELY AT
VARIANCE--HIS RISE AND PROGRESS IN THE CHURCH--POOR COUSIN
"HENNY"--HIS TREATMENT OF HER--THE METHODIST PREACHERS--THEIR
UTTER DISREGARD OF US--ONE EXCELLENT EXCEPTION--REV. GEORGE
COOKMAN--SABBATH SCHOOL--HOW BROKEN UP AND BY WHOM--A FUNERAL
PALL CAST OVER ALL MY PROSPECTS--COVEY THE NEGRO-BREAKER.

St. Michael's, the village in which was now my new home, compared
favorably with villages in slave states, generally. There were a
few comfortable dwellings in it, but the place, as a whole, wore
a dull, slovenly, enterprise-forsaken aspect. The mass of the
buildings were wood; they had never enjoyed the artificial
adornment of paint, and time and storms had worn off the bright
color of the wood, leaving them almost as black as buildings
charred by a conflagration.

St. Michael's had, in former years, (previous to 1833, for that
was the year I went to reside there,) enjoyed some reputation as
a ship building community, but that business had almost entirely
given place to oyster fishing, for the Baltimore and Philadelphia
markets--a course of life highly unfavorable to morals, industry,
and manners. Miles river was broad, and its oyster fishing ARRIVAL AT ST. MICHAEL'S>grounds were extensive; and the
fishermen were out, often, all day, and a part of the night,
during autumn, winter and spring. This exposure was an excuse
for carrying with them, in considerable quanties{sic}, spirituous
liquors, the then supposed best antidote for cold. Each canoe
was supplied with its jug of rum; and tippling, among this class
of the citizens of St. Michael's, became general. This drinking
habit, in an ignorant population, fostered coarseness, vulgarity
and an indolent disregard for the social improvement of the
place, so that it was admitted, by the few sober, thinking people
who remained there, that St. Michael's had become a very
_unsaintly_, as well as unsightly place, before I went there to
reside.

I left Baltimore for St. Michael's in the month of March, 1833.
I know the year, because it was the one succeeding the first
cholera in Baltimore, and was the year, also, of that strange
phenomenon, when the heavens seemed about to part with its starry
train. I witnessed this gorgeous spectacle, and was awe-struck.
The air seemed filled with