light as they do the brute beasts, on the farms, and often
times treat them as inhumanly."

His slaves by no means led lives of luxury and inglorious ease. A
friendly Polish poet who visited Mount Vernon in 1798 was shocked by the
poor quarters and rough food provided for them. He wrote:

"We entered some negroes' huts--for their habitations cannot be called
houses. They are far more miserable than the poorest of the cottages of
our peasants. The husband and his wife sleep on a miserable bed, the
children on the floor. A very poor chimney, a little kitchen furniture
amid this misery--a tea-kettle and cups.... A small orchard with
vegetables was situated close to the hut. Five or six hens, each with
ten or fifteen chickens, walked there. That is the only pleasure allowed
to the negroes: they are not permitted to keep either ducks or geese
or pigs."

Yet all the slaves he saw seemed gay and light-hearted and on Sundays
played at pitching the bar with an activity and zest that indicated that
they managed to keep from being overworked and found some enjoyment
in life.

To our Farmer's orderly and energetic soul his shiftless lazy blacks
were a constant trial. In his diary for February, 1760, he records that
four of his carpenters had only hewed about one hundred twenty feet of
timber in a day, so he tried the experiment of sitting down and watching
them. They at once fell to with such energy and worked so rapidly that
he concluded that each one ought to hew about one hundred twenty-five
feet per day and more when the days were longer.

A later set of carpenters seem to have been equally trifling, for of
them he said in 1795: "There is not to be found so idle a set of
Rascals.--In short, it appears to me, that to make even a chicken coop,
would employ all of them a week."

"It is observed by the Weekly Report," he wrote when President, "that
the Sowers make only Six Shirts a Week, and the last week Caroline
(without being sick) made only five;--Mrs. Washington says their usual
task was to make nine with Shoulder straps, & good sewing:--tell them
therefore from me, that what _has_ been done _shall_ be done by fair or
foul means; & they had better make a choice of the first, for their own
reputation, & for the sake of peace and quietness otherwise they will be
sent to the several Plantations, & be placed at common labor under the
Overseers thereat. Their work ought to be well examined, or it will be
most shamefully exe