A MUCH NEEDED LESSON
As a matter of fact he flogged that miserly innkeeper severely, never letting up until the fellow cried that he had had enough; then Isaac said that he counted to be back that way in the spring, and if the slats in the hayracks had been replaced, he would give him another flogging compared with which this one would seem like child's play.
I confess that I was frightened even after Isaac had acquitted himself in such a manly fashion, for I believed the landlord would contrive in some way to make the remainder of our party suffer for what had been done; but, strange as it may seem, he was as mild as one could desire, and instead of moving about in a surly fashion, finding fault with everything, as he had done when we first arrived, the fellow seemed striving earnestly to do all he might for our welfare, whereupon Uncle Daniel grimly observed that "all he needed in order to make him a decent kind of a man was a sound flogging every morning."
I would not recommend this method of insuring good treatment from landlords in general; but I must say I was sorry Isaac had not been sufficiently provoked some time before, that he might have tried the same treatment upon some of those innkeepers who had been so surly to us. In fact we met more than one so-called landlord during our journey across the state of Pennsylvania, by the side of whom one of Uncle Daniel's oxen would have appeared gentlemanly.
On Sunday, all of us, even including Isaac Barker, went to meeting with Master Hiples's family, and not only were repaid by hearing a goodly discourse, but received an invitation to take supper with the good Dunkard's family.