le to the
conversation, only assenting, smiling, and looking the picture of ease
and good humor, as he sat lazily beaming behind a tumbler full of
Bourbon whiskey and water.

'Yes, sar!' the negro answered, 'too bad, mass' Philip not come home for
de holidays. All de people 'spect him.'

'That's a first-rate boy,' said his master, as the negro left the room
to fetch something; 'I wouldn't take two thousand dollars for him.'
(Every one familiar with the South, must have heard similar encomiums
hundreds of times: each household appears to pride itself on the
possession of some singularly admirable negro, whose capacity, honesty,
and fidelity are vaunted with an air of conscious magnanimity edifying
to witness. The desired inference is that the institution, productive of
so much mutual appreciation, _must_ be excellent. It never seems to
occur to the eulogists that the good is exceptional, or that the praised
characteristics might be alleged as an argument for emancipation.)

'That boy has been North with me,' the Colonel continued, 'to
Washington, Philadelphia, and as far as New York. The abolitionists got
hold of him at the last place, and wanted to run him off to Canada, but
Pomp preferred old Carolina. You don't want to be free, do you, Pomp?'

This was a leading question. The slave hesitated a moment, grinned, and
evaded it,

''Pears like de colored people at de Norf was mostly a mis'able set,' he
answered: _'can't shum!'_

'You can't see it!' said his master, delighted, and translating a very
popular negro phrase for my benefit. And incontinently he launched into
a defence and eulogium of slavery, which I shall not oblige my readers
to skip by recording. The topic is one on which Southerners are never
wearied; and a more uneasy people on the subject than South Carolinians
it would be impossible to imagine: long before Secession, they existed
in a state of chronic distrust and suspicion about it amounting to
monomania.

* * * * *

Next day I accompanied the Colonel over his plantation. It was a large
one, somewhat over seven hundred acres, inclusive of forest land, about
two thirds being reclaimed upland swamp soil growing seaisland cotton.
An old family estate, most of the negroes belonging to it had been born
there or in the immediate vicinity; there were about two hundred of
them, some living near their master's house, as has been mentioned, the
rest in a sort of colony at t