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GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Apr. 1 



in my researches after God's truths. As an il- 

 lustration, wherever I am, wherever I stop, I 

 generally make inquiries, almost the first 

 thing, about the water closets. In the aver- 

 age hotel here in the North, we have warm 

 and convenient closets, not only intide of the 

 building, but, in newer hotels, on each sepa- 

 rate floor. A great many times when I ask 

 for a sleeping-room near the closet, T can 

 have it without any trouble ; and when I can 

 find a nice clean bath room, wash-room, and 

 closet combined, near my sleeping-apartment, 

 I feel quite happy. 



In the South, the hotels, especially the old- 

 er ones, pay very little attention to the health 

 and comfort of their guests, in the line of clos- 

 ets. At hotels where they charge $2 00 or 

 $2.50 a day, when you ask about the closet 

 they will point away off across the garden. I 

 am not finding any fault with private homes, 

 mind you, for I found very comfortable 

 arrangements of this kind everywhere I stop- 

 ped during my recent trip. L^t me give you 

 a glimpse of one hotel where they charge $2.50 

 a day. I was expecting to get breakfast 

 there ; but when I inquired for a closet the 

 landlord told me to go into the kitchen, and 

 then the cook would show me the way. The 

 cook was a colored man. I do not blame him 

 for being black, but I do blame him for being 

 filthy-looking, and for having about the filth- 

 iest and fiasiifsfloo'k.ing kitchen I ever saw 

 on the face of the earth. To add to it all, he 

 was smoking the nastiest tobacco I ever 

 smelled in my life, with an equally nasty pipe. 

 The cooking-room was thick with tobacco 

 smoke ; and as he leaned over his culinary 

 work he kept on puffing. It seemed to me he 

 was trying to blow the smoke into the stuff 

 he was cooking. The closet the pointed out 

 was equally filthy. I did not get any break- 

 fast at that hotel ; but I was intending to do 

 so, and should have done so had not mere 

 chance led me through the kitchen. 



Now, I do not know but there is a provi- 

 dence in this matter. In fact, I begin to think 

 that perhaps the great Father's plan is to send 

 me back behind the scenes of the dining- 

 rooms and other places. You know I have 

 often gone through saloons and into their 

 back apartments, just because this infirmity of 

 mine setit me there. After this visit I have 

 told you of, especially where colored men have 

 charge of the cooking, I have been suspicious 

 a good many times of the food brought. 

 Some of these colored cooks, that run the 

 whole ranch without having anybody to look 

 after them, might poison jou with their filth, 

 and I do not know that they would care much 

 if they did. I say this after sizing up several 

 of these chaps as well as I could. 



Now, some of my friends have felt much 

 hurt, and some of j'ou have stopped taking 

 Glhanings because of my defense of the col- 

 ored people. May be you will feel better 

 when I say right here I do not believe colored 

 men — and, for that mattei, perhaps a good 

 many colored women might be put in with 

 them — should be allowed to cook without 

 some competent white man or woman to super- 

 intend their work. I spoke about sitting 



down to the table with a colored man or wo- 

 man. On the Louisville & Nashville Railway, 

 both going and coming, I became acquainted 

 with two colored porters. One of them had 

 charge of the buffet cooking ; and I would 

 just as soon sit down to a meal with either of 

 these men as not. They were bright, intelli- 

 gent, skillful, neat, and clean. But the aver- 

 age ntgro of the South, especially the tobacco- 

 using blacks, are not fit to sit down with me 

 nor to do the cooking for me or for my fami- 

 ly. They might be washed up and civilized. 

 But somebody would have to stand over them 

 a good while. Now, this is a more serious 

 matter than it seems. People die every little 

 while from something the doctors call pto- 

 maine poisoning. This poisoning, if I under- 

 stand it, is from either animal or vegetable 

 food in a certain stage of decay. While at 

 River Junction I noticed a very bad taste in 

 my mouth. Now please bear with me a little, 

 friends, because I am going to touch on a 

 point that concerns not only health but per- 

 haps life itself. My mouth not only tasted 

 bad, but the eructations of gas that came up 

 from my stomach, or belchingsof wind, some 

 might call it, were " just awful." The ema- 

 nations from a frog- pond in dog days were 

 nothing compared with it. The smtll and 

 taste were more like rotten eggs. I felt fear- 

 ful of the result. I thought if I had a good 

 square meal of wholesome food the foul mass 

 would probably be carried away and passed 

 through the bowels ; but for two or three days 

 I carried with me that awful foul breath. I 

 thought of the ptomaine poisoning, and I be- 

 lieve yet it was a mild furcn of it, caused by 

 something I ate at some hotel or on some 

 steamer where these filthy colored people did 

 all the work. I meditated taking an emetic 

 or something that would make me throw the 

 stuff up ; but I hoped Nature would take care 

 of it after her own fashion. Well she did, 

 and I am going to tell you how. 



Ill about three days my stomach seemed to 

 have regained its normal state ; but when this 

 poison got into the bowels it first produced 

 diarrhea and then dysentery. My experience 

 in Flora Home, shut up with three big men 

 in a little tight bedroom, with tobacco smoke 

 coming up from below, did not help Nature to 

 get rid of the poison. I was sick all night. 

 During the day I felt pretty well, and got off 

 at a station called Favorita. My friend A. F. 

 Brown lived six or seven miles out in the 

 woods. Favorita is a very pretty name, but 

 there are no houses there, nor is there a sta- 

 tion. I do not know that there is even a plat- 

 form. You just get off the cars, and step into 

 the sand. A boy was there with a buckboard, 

 waiting for the mail. I could not tell friend 

 Brown what day I would be there, so he could 

 not be at the train for me. I could not have 

 ridden my wheel out to my friend's nor even 

 gone on foot, for, besides the sand, there were 

 long stretches of road that were all under 

 water. In fact, it came almost up to our ftet 

 as we sat in the buckboard. 



Just before reaching Bulow — and, by the 

 way, that is not a town either, but just a post- 

 ofiice in the woods — we passed through some 



