apologize for their conduct by saying that "when in Rome, we must do as
the Romans do."

Uncle Aaron Bristol was one of Capt. Helm's slaves who had a large amount
of this miserable pride; and for him to be associated with a white man in
the same humble occupation, seemed to give him ideas of great superiority,
and full liberty to treat him with all the scorn and sarcasm he was
capable of, in which my uncle was by no means deficient.

At this time the Captain owned a fine and valuable horse, by the name of
_Speculator_. This horse, groomed by uncle Aaron, stood sometimes at Bath
and sometimes at Geneva; and at the latter village another horse was kept,
groomed by a white man. The white groom was not very well pleased with
Aaron's continual disparagement of the clumsy animal which my uncle called
"a great, awkward plow-horse;" and then he would fling out some of his
proud nonsense about "_poor white people_ who were obliged to groom their
own old dumpy horses," &c.

Well, things went on in this unpleasant manner for several weeks, when at
last the white groom and Aaron met at Geneva, and the horse belonging to
the former, designedly or accidentally, escaped from his keeper, and came
with full speed, with his mouth wide open, after Speculator. When the
fiery fellow had overtaken uncle Aaron he attempted to grasp the wethers
of Speculator with his teeth, instead of which he caught Aaron on the
inside of his thigh, near the groin, from whence he bit a large piece of
flesh, laying the bone entirely bare; at the same moment flinging Aaron to
the ground, some rods off; and the next instant he kicked Speculator down
a steep embankment Aaron was taken up for dead, and Dr. Henry sent for,
who dressed his wounds; and after several months' confinement he finally
recovered. It is probable that the biting and overthrow of Aaron saved his