"Ah, hah, and that goes to prove what I say, that you haven't given enough study to that important subject. It isn't right for a man to cultivate one lobe of his mind and neglect the other. Man's mind, you know, has two lobes--one embracing the horse, and the other covering the human family and other little things. I wonder how much longer things are going to be as dull as they are now. Why, out in Illinois we had something every day to interest us, up hill and down, but here everything is on a dead level. There's not enough ginger in the air." "But it's full of poetry, Uncle Clem." "Full of poetry? Well, maybe it is, but you have to listen too close to hear it." "Ah, but the sweetest communications come in a whisper." "By the hoofs, the boy's in love. Now, you take a horseman's advice and keep out of it. It's a jolt, leaving you for a time to wonder whether you're hurt or not, and after a while you find that you are. Yonder come the General and that doctor. Let's sheer off this way and go back to the house?" CHAPTER XVII. How the coming of one person can change an atmosphere! At one moment the breath we draw is a new and invigorating hope, the next instant the air is parched and dead--we see an evil eye, a hated face. My education was not systematic; I read as a hungry man eats; and, as my learning progressed, I began to give myself up to a speculation upon the sadness of my lot in life, my eyes becoming wider and wider opened to the fact that knowledge could avail me nothing, could but throw a lime-light upon my bondage and make it ghastly; but when the doctor returned I looked back at my state of happiness during his absence. It was true that Old Miss gave over no opportunity to humiliate me, but I had grown so accustomed to this that no longer did it sting me--I put it down as the soured whim of an old woman. But the sight of the doctor, the fact that he and I were under the same roof, was iced water constantly dripping upon my head. I was not physically afraid of him; gladly would I have fought him; in a fight I could have cut his throat and stood looking calmly upon his blood, and thousands of times had I wished that I were a white man, that I might challenge him; but morally I stood in horror of him. I avoided him, slinking about like a thief; I hid myself behind stone walls and in thickets until he had passed, but at the table I was compelled to look upon him and to hear his voice. Once when he spoke to me my Young Master saw me tremble and when we had gone forth together, the young man said to me: "Dan, don't stand behind my chair at meal time any more. It's a piece of nonsense anyway, a notion covered with mold." I thanked him and told him that I would not, but at supper that evening, Old Mistress flouted so and made such a fuss at my absence that Master came to the foot of the stairs and called me. "It won't be for long," he said as I came down. "I don't believe that fellow can stay here much longer."