Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. I.djvu/396

Rh “and no longer able to work, master and mistress will take care of me!” So think many old slaves, and do not trouble themselves about a freedom in which they would have to take care of themselves. And this is good when the master and mistress are good, and do not die before the old slaves, in which case the fate of these is very uncertain, and becomes sometimes, under new owners, worse than that of the domestic animals.

During my visit to a few of the plantations, I could clearly see that the ladies looked on me with suspicious glances. I liked one of these ladies nevertheless. She seemed to me of a fresh, fine, motherly character. I requested her to accompany me to the slave-village at a short distance from the house. She agreed to do so. The hands, as the working negroes of the South are called, were now out in the fields reaping the corn, and their houses were mostly locked up; I went into the few that remained open. In one of these an old negro, who had a bad foot, sat on the bed. Both himself and the whole dwelling bore the stamp of good care and attention. “He is well provided for in his old age, because he is one of our own people,” said Mrs. E., aloud to me, so that the negro might hear her; “if he were free he would not be so well off.”

“And why not?” said I, but silently to myself, for I would not say it aloud lest the negro should hear. “We too, on our estates in Sweden, have old and sick servants, and although they are free and enjoy freely the wages for which they serve, yet we consider it no less incumbent on us, in justice to them and as our own duty, to take all possible care of them in their sickness and old age; and if they serve us faithfully, to make their old age as happy as we possibly can, consistently with our own means. The bad master with us, as well as the bad slave-holder goes where he belongs.”

This is what I wished to say to Mrs. E., and would have