Court-House means horses; that I, together
with a dozen other human beings are in the
land of Houhynhyms. The horses are
evidently the people here, and the men the
strangers.

Jemima Court-House is a straggling, muddy,
hoof-marked, and trampled-upon lane of
about one hundred feet wide. On one side,
a low, dingy, two-winged, one-storied brick
house of primeval griminess, flanked on either
side by ranges of sheds, and. the invariable
horse-rail for a hundred yards or so. The
middle of the street is filled with horses, dogs,
buggies, a pedlar's waggon, and men. On the
other side, the tavern. More horse-rails,
and more horse-sheds, horses, mares, and
colts, buyers, sellers, swappers, stealers,
traders, and more horses, and a solitary
Yankee standing on the roof of a long, low,
box-like black waggon, selling tin-ware,
clocks, and books particularly, but open to a
trade of any kind, generally. Court-day in
Jemima is horse-day. Everybody in
Virginia has horses, and on every court-day to
the court-house they are all brought. For
any particular purpose, think you? Oh, no?
If you ask any one of these idle gentlemen,
if he wishes to sell any out of his lot (for no
matter if a man has fifty horses, he is bound
to bring them all to court), the chances are
he will say — "He don't care, he will sell, but
he'd as lieve not, he didn't bring 'em to sell,
but he has sold some before. But he don't
care, and it don't make any difference. Come,
let's take a drink!" Does the Virginia
gentleman want to buy? No, he don't want
to buy, but if he saw anything he wanted,
he would buy. He's just come down to look
around and see things, nothing particular;
come home and stay with us. Can't? Well,
then, come take a drink! There is some difficulty
in understanding why a man should
bring a drove of horses a distance of fifteen
or more miles, and then spend the whole
day lolling against the side of a house, or
looking at the horses of others, who have
done like him.

Feeling, as I said before, that I am in the
country of the Houhynhyms, I look about me
for the Yahoos. I don't have to make an
extensive exploration, for I hear a bell
ding-donging. There is a little rush of part
of the crowd, including the Yankee, and I
follow to see what it is about. Behind the
Court-House I find an inveritable horse-shed.
Into this the crowd hurries. In the
middle there is a barrel standing on one
end, and on the top of the barrel I find
my Yahoo. It is a male. He has on a
mangy fur cap, whose lapels hang loosely
about his ears; one corner of it is pulled
over his right eye. A monkey jacket, one
pocket of which is stuffed full of dirty
papers, with bits of rope hanging out, a
tan-coloured pair of pantaloons, rolled up over a
pair of penitentiary-made brogans, complete
his costume. In one hand he holds a printed
hand-bill, and in the other a short knobbed
baton. He reads from the hand-bill a
description of a negro:

Boy Joe, fifty-four years of age, sound in wind and
limb, two children last fall, is a field hand, but has
waited on table.

To the negro: "Now then, d—n yer, yer
lazy skunk, gone to sleep behind the barrel,
have yer? Come now, stand up."

To the crowd: "Har, gentlemen, air as
fine a nigger." (To the darkey): "Cuss yer,
don't stand gazing there, but show yer ivories
to the gentlemen."

The boy is pinched, poked, punched, and
felt like an ox, his mouth looked into, and his
eyes prodded open and examined.

Negro to one of the bystanders: " 'Sposin
Massa Smif buy dis nigga. lis don't want
to go under Loaf. Ole Virginny suit dis
nigga."

"Smith, I wish you would buy him, he's a
good hand, and you won't regret your money,
and as sound as a roach," says the owner,
who is standing by— a gentleman who has
met with losses— has been solacing himself
during the morning by mint-juleps at
intervals of five minutes each. Massa Smif
buys Joe, and then the others are sold, among
them some women. There is no crying, no
shrieking, nor tearing away, nor beating, nor
any emotion of any kind manifested in any
way. The negroes come when they are called,
and not a spark of intelligence, of pleasure,
or pain gleams on their countenances to
signify they own a human face divine. After
the first one, and the curiosity, and disgust,
the utter degradation of feeling that man,
born in God's image, can be so low and not
know it, it is a common-place, tiresome,
uninspiring affair. You have your reflections
(and I advise you to keep them), but I defy
any one, unless he is blessed with Sterne's
portable fire-engine sympathy, which can
squirt a tear over a dead jackass, to have his
feelings excited, or interested by any individual
appeal to his heart, arising from the
manners, or the condition of such miserable
objects as I saw before me at the negro vendue
in Jemima.

All the mint must have been nearly used
up by the time the Court adjourns. So the
Yankee shuts up his waggon, the gentlemen
collects their horses and negroes, and away
they all go with a great clatter. The writer
goes also; thinking that, if in his own country,
such a phase of life be new and curious to
turn, it will be a good and strange thing for
our cousins across the ocean to see a picture
(however clumsily drawn) of the way they
live in Jemima.