Page:The White Slave, or Memoirs of a Fugitive.djvu/280

 discipline of major Thornton, to whom I had myself formerly belonged. Mr Mason was, like major Thornton, his own overseer, though he employed an assistant under him for each of the plantations, men, like himself, of intelligence, education, and humanity, but whom, he said, it had cost him great searching to find, and great labor to train. Every thing went on with the regularity of clockwork. The allowances to the people, both of food and clothing, were generous, and the tasks by which every thing was done, moderate. The whip was only used on very rare occasions, and that rather for the punishment of the misdemeanors which the people committed against each other, than for those against the master; for said Mr Mason, "I am not only plantation manager, but judge and magistrate to settle all our internal disputes, and, in fact, to tell the truth, the very hardest worked slave in the whole establishment. How many planters in North Carolina do you suppose would accept my property on condition of managing it as I do?" The great stimulus employed to make the people work was emulation. They were divided into eight or ten classes, according to their capacity and aptitude for labor, individuals being promoted or degraded according to their merits, and each class, according to the amount of labor it performed, being distinguished by certain privileges and badges of honor. The lowest class of all was called the "lazy class," into which there was a great horror of falling, except on the part of two or three habitual sluggards who were always in it, and who served as standing butts for all the wit of the plantation. At the close of every harvest, there was a grand fancy ball, at which the people were allowed precedence according to their merits. The best of them had the first choice of characters, the range of which first choice was, however, rather limited, lying between General Washington in sword and cocked hat, and old Master Mason, my host's father, till lately General Jackson, since he was chosen president, had come in as a rival.