Page:Memorials of a Southern Planter.djvu/85

 Rh negroes could be trusted to any extent. The interrogator had probably confounded negroes who were trusted with those who were not. The confidence shown in them by the heads of her Southern home had taught the negroes so much self-respect that a thoroughly thievish negro was put under the ban in his own little world. Thomas had the control of about five hundred of them. About two hundred were his own, and on the Burleigh plantation. The others belonged to his wards, and wore nearly all family negroes, closely related to his, and living on neighboring plantations. He had the management of four estates belonging to minors. It was a saying in the family that the estates of his wards were better managed than his own, and their property increased faster than his.

"Of course, I put the best overseers on their plantations," he said. "You see, I am here to look after my own." The negroes of these came to him as to their master, and he treated them as his own.

He bought a cook, one of his mother's negroes, after he went to Mississippi, at the same time making the arrangement to buy her husband. For some reason both did not go out together. A cook was always a belle on a plantation, and this young Alcey soon had all the unmarried men at her feet, among others a young fellow named Bob. One Sunday evening, as the rival suitors were sitting with her, Bob, who was thought to be a favored one, got his jawbone caught back in an unfortunate yawn, and spent several hours speechless, with his mouth wide open, while a messenger was despatched for the doctor. But this did not seem to disillusionize the object of his addresses, for she wrote a letter to her hushand in Virginia that quite decided him not to join her. He also, it was said, had been casting his eyes around for a more congenial mate. When Mrs. Chamberlayne spoke to him of going out to Mississippi, he answered that Alcey had given him an account in a letter of the terrible ocean that had to be gone over on the way. Mrs. Chamberlayne said that if a woman could stand the journey a strong man certainly could. "Yes, Miss