, and ye'd think they were babies, if ye'd see himself talk
to them at the jail, and send them up things, as if they were better
than the other criminals, and couldn't live on the jail fare," said
officer Dunn, who continued to pledge himself to the sheriff that the
wharves should not be neglected, nor a hopeful English darky escape his
vigilant eye.

"For my own part, I think they're better off in jail than they would be
on the wharf," continued Grimshaw. "They're a worthless set, and ha'n't
half the character that a majority of our slaves have; and instead of
attending the captain on board, they'd be into Elliot street, spending
their money, getting drunk, and associating with our worst niggers. And
they all know so much about law, that they're always teaching our bad
niggers the beauties of their government, which makes them more unhappy
than they are. Our niggers are like a shoal of fish--when one becomes
diseased, he spreads it among all the rest; and before you know where
you are, they're done gone."

"They're not very profitable customers for us, Sheriff," said
Dusenberry. "We have a deal of watching, and a mighty smart lot of
trouble after we get them fellows; and if we get a perquisite, it never
amounts to much, for I seldom knew one that had money enough to treat
as we took him up. These Britishers a'n't like us; they don't pay off in
port and if the fellows get any thing in jail from the consul, it's by
drib-drabs, that a'n't no good, for it all goes for liquor. And them
criminals make a dead haul upon a black steward, as soon as he is locked
up. But if these sympathizing fools follow up their bugbears about the
treatment at the jail, they'll get things so that our business won't
be worth a dollar. For my own part, I'm not so much beholdin', for I've
made myself comfortable within the last few years, but I want my son
to succeed me in the office. But if this consul of their'n keeps up his
objections, appeals, and his protests in this way, and finds such men as
his honor the district-attorney to second him with his nonsense and his
notions, folks of our business might as well move north of Mason and
Dixon's."

"I can wake him up to a point," said Grimshaw, "that that abolition
consul ha'n't learnt before; and if he'd stuck his old petition
in Charles Sumner's breeches pocket instead of sending it to our
legislature, he might have saved his old-womanish ideas from the
showing' up that Myzeck gave 'em. It tak