When I opened my eyes I found that I was lying in a hovel, very mean of appearance, yet with a certain neatness and cleanliness about it that prevented it from looking squalid. It is true that the floor, which was of planks, was somewhat awry and dilapidated; that the little window, which, with the door, furnished, or was meant to furnish, its only light, was rather bountifully bedecked with old hats and scraps of brown paper; and that the walls of ill-plastered logs displayed divers gleaming chinks, and vistas through them of the sunny prospects without. Nevertheless, the place did not look amiss for a poor man, and, in my experience as a philanthropist, I had seen hundreds much more miserable. An old woman sat at the fireplace, nodding over a stew, the fumes of which were both savoury and agreeable. The old woman was, however, as black as the outside of her stew-pan--in other words, a negress; and this circumstance striking upon the chords of association, I began to remember what had lately befallen me. A terrible suspicion flashed into my mind. Had I not--but before I could ask myself the question, my hand, which I had raised to scratch my head, came into contact with a mop of elastic wool, such as never grew upon the scalp of a white man. I started up in bed and looked at my hands and arms; they were of the hue of ebony--or, to speak more strictly, of smoked mahogany. I saw a fragment of looking-glass hanging on the wall within my reach. I snatched it down, and took a survey of my physiognomy. Miserable me! my _face_ was as black as my arms--and, indeed, somewhat more so--presenting a sable globe, broken only by two red lips of immense magnitude, and a brace of eyes as white and as wide as plain China saucers, or peeled turnips. "Whaw dah!" cried the old woman, roused by the noise I made; "whaw dat, you nigga Tom? what you doin' dah? Lorra bless us! if a nigga break a neck, can't a nigga hold-a still?" Alas! and had my fate brought me to this grievous pass? Was there no other situation in life sufficiently wretched, but that I must take up my lot in the body of a miserable negro slave? How idle had been all my past discontent! how foolish the persuasion I had indulged five different times, that I was, on each occasion, the most unhappy of men! I had forgotten the state of the bondman, the condition of the expatriated African. _Now_ I was at last to learn in reality what it was to be the victim of fortune, what to be the exemplar of wretchedness, the true repository of all the griefs that can afflict a human being. Already I felt, in imagination, the blow of the task-master on my back, the fetter on my limb, the iron in my soul; and when the old woman made a step towards me, perhaps to discover why I made no reply to her questions, I was so prepossessed with the idea of whips and lashes, that I made a dodge under the bedclothes, as if to escape a thwack.