a grove of perfect evergreen. I had
with me one of the men of the name of Hector, who has a good deal to do
with the horses, and so had volunteered to accompany me, being one of the
few negroes on the estate who can sit a horse. In the course of our
conversation, Hector divulged certain opinions relative to the comparative
gentility of driving in a carriage, and the vulgarity of walking; which
sent me into fits of laughing; at which he grinned sympathetically, and
opened his eyes very wide, but certainly without attaining the least
insight into what must have appeared to him my very unaccountable and
unreasonable merriment. Among various details of the condition of the
people on the several estates in the island, he told me that a great
number of the men on all the different plantations had _wives_ on the
neighbouring estates, as well as on that to which they properly belonged.
'Oh, but,' said I, 'Hector, you know that cannot be, a man has but one
lawful wife.' Hector knew this, he said, and yet seemed puzzled himself,
and rather puzzled me to account for the fact, that this extensive
practice of bigamy was perfectly well known to the masters and overseers,
and never in any way found fault with, or interfered with. Perhaps this
promiscuous mode of keeping up the slave population finds favour with the
owners of creatures who are valued in the market at so much per head. This
was a solution which occurred to me, but which I left my Trojan hero to
discover, by dint of the profound pondering into which he fell.

Not far from the house as I was cantering home, I met S----, and took her
up on the saddle before me, an operation which seemed to please her better
than the vicious horse I was riding, whose various demonstrations of
dislike to the arrangement afforded my small equestrian extreme delight
and triumph. My whole afternoon was spent in shifting my bed and bed-room
furniture from a room on the ground-floor to one above; in the course of
which operation, a brisk discussion took place between M---- and my boy
Jack, who was nailing on the vallence of the bed; and whom I suddenly
heard exclaim in answer to something she had said--'Well den, I do tink
so; and dat's the speech of a man, whether um bond or free.' A very
trifling incident, and insignificant speech; and yet it came back to my
ears very often afterward--'the speech of a _man_, whether bond or free.'
They might be made conscious--some of them are evidently consciou