“Don't hab slabes? Who totes your water and picks de cotton and hoes de fields?”
“We don't grow any cotton, and all our work is done by people whom we hire and pay money to.”
The old slave's eyes opened wide with curiosity.
“And when dey gets sassy, does de oberseer whip 'em?” Ralph laughed heartily as he thought of the suit for assault and battery whipping a servant up North would bring about. Here was an old colored woman as ignorant of her relationship to the great tide of humanity as a child. Born in the West in a little village where no negroes were to be found, he had seldom met one.
The old woman seemed to be talking to herself.
“It pears to me dey must be dissbedient and sassy sumtimes. All niggers are. Wonder how dey makes dem mind. When dey runs across a right smart uppish cullered pusson how do dey settle wid him? Did you say, massa, dey neber whip dem?”
“No, auntie, they never do.”
Aunt Judah shook her head doubtingly. “Massa.”
“The one man governs the whole of them. Your old masters didn't like the man who was chosen, and so they said they wouldn't stay in the Union to be governed by him.”
“Is dat man a big man? Does he b'long to a good family?”