Page:Fifty Years in Chains, or the Life of an American Slave.djvu/150

148 back, if I did not perform as much work as any of the other young men.

I expected indeed that it would go hard with me even now, and stood by with feelings of despondence end terror, whilst the other people were getting their cotton weighed. When it was all weighed, the overseer came to me where I stood, and told me to show him my hands. When I had done this, and he had looked at them, he observed — "You have a pair of good hands — you will make a good picker." This faint praise of the overseer revived my spirits greatly, and I went home with a lighter heart than I had expected to possess, before the termination of cotton-picking.

When I came to get my cotton weighed, on the evening of the second day, I was rejoiced to find that I had forty-six pounds, although I had not worked harder than I did the first day. On the third evening I had fifty-two pounds; and before the end of the week, there were only three hands in the field — two men and a young woman — who could pick more cotton in a day than I could.

On the Monday morning of the second week, when we went to the field, the overseer told us that he fixed the day's work at fifty pounds; and that all those who picked more than that, would be paid a cent a pound for the overplus. Twenty-five pounds was assigned as