Note J — Chapter XVII
Reading edition
The whiskey was kept in a back room, above ground, because the dwelling had no cellar. The fluid was kept safely, under lock and key, and the farmer accounted for that, by saying that his negroes would steal nothing but whiskey. Few country houses at the South have a cellar—that apartment deemed so essential by Northern housekeepers. The intervening space between the ground and the floor is there left open, to allow of a free circulation of air.