y! I 'fraid o' dem! didn't tink dere was so much water in de
world!' adding a compliment on the supposed courage involved in crossing
the Atlantic. Negroes have almost no relative ideas of distance or
number beyond a very limited extent; they will say 'a tousan'd,' fifty
or a hundred 'tousand,' with equal inexactitude and fluency. Presently
Pompey began again:

'Many colored people in England, sa?'

'Very few. You might live there a year without meeting one.'

'I'se hear dey's all free--dem what is dar? dat so?' he asked,
curiously.

'Yes; just as they are at the North; only I think they're a little
better treated in England. We don't make any difference between men on
account of their skin. You might marry a white woman there, Pompey, if
you could get her to have you.'

Pompey honored this remark with as much ready negro laughter as he
seemed to think it demanded.

'I'se got a wife already, sa,' he answered. 'But 'pears to me England
must be good country to lib in.'

'Why so?'

'All free dar, sa!'

'Why you'd have to work harder than you do here, and have nobody to take
care of you. The climate wouldn't suit you, either, there's not enough
sunshine. You couldn't have a kinder or a better master than Colonel
----, I'm sure.'

'No, _sa!_' with a good deal of earnestness; 'he fust-rate man, sa, dat
a fac; and Mass' Philip and de young ladies, dey berry good to us.
But--' and the slave hesitated.

'What is it, Pompey? Speak out!'

'Well, den, some day de Cunnel he die, and den trouble come, _suah!_ De
ole plantation be sold, and de hands sold too, or we be divide 'tween
Mass' Phil, Miss Jule, and Miss Emmy. Dey get married, ob course. Some
go one way, some toder, we wid dem--nebber lib together no more. Dat's
what I keep t'inkin ob, sa!'

What answer could be made to this simple statement of one of the dire
contingencies inevitable to slave life? perhaps that most dreaded by the
limited class of well cared-for house servants, of which Pompey was a
good representative. He knew, as well as I, that his poor average of
happiness was fortuitous--that it hinged on the life of his master. At
his death he might become the chattel of any human brute with a white
epidermis and money enough to buy him; might be separated from wife,
children, companions and past associations. Suggesting the practical
wisdom involved in the biblical axiom that sufficient for the day is the
evil thereof, I turned the conversation and p