Page:The cotton kingdom (Volume 2).djvu/104

 probably). They worked well for a few days at a time; were better at picking than at hoeing. "They don't pick so much in a day as niggers, but do it better." The women said they were good for nothing, and her husband had no business to plant so much cotton that he couldn't 'tend it with his own slave hands.

While at table a young man, very dirty and sweaty, with a ragged shirt and no coat on, came in to supper. He was surly and rude in his actions, and did not speak a word; he left the table before I had finished, and lighting a pipe, laid himself at full length on the floor of the room to smoke. This was the overseer.

Immediately after supper the master told me that he was in the habit of going to bed early, and he would show me where I was to sleep. He did so, and left me without a candle. It was dark, and I did not know the way to the stables, so I soon went to bed. On a feather bed I did not enjoy much rest, and when I at last awoke and dressed, breakfast was just ready. I said I would go first to look after my horse, and did so, the planter following me. I found him standing in a miserable stall, in a sorry state; he had not been cleaned, and there were no cobs or other indications of his having been fed at all since he had been there. I said to my host—

"He has not been fed, sir!"

"I wonder! hain't he? "Well, I'll have him fed. I s'pose the overseer forgot him."

But, instead of going to the crib and feeding him at once himself, he returned to the house and blew a horn for a negro; when after a long time one came in sight from the cotton-fields, he called to him to go to the overseer for the key of the corn-crib and feed the gentleman's horse, and asked me now to come to breakfast. The overseer joined us as a