Green has returned to work; that is, he milked this morning and hauled one load of manure to the field. His cousin, Wishy, got his kinfolk to buy off the negro who was prosecuting him for killing his cow, and the case was dropped.
Long ago, when I kept Wishy from bleeding to death by patching up his head, I fear I did not benefit the world.
I find Elihu has gone! Moved bag and baggage to my neighbor's, where he will have unlimited credit. He owes me $10, which he promised faithfully to pay, and Jean and Kitty have walked off in my boots beyond the reach of my small efforts to improve them.
I feel quite sad about it—my heart has always been tender to Elihu; I have had to help him so often. The last time he went off to make "big money," as they call it, on some timber work he came back very ill, and for a month I took him nourishment and medicine daily, in spite of which his wife and children lived in my potato patch. He was very weak, and one day he broke out: "Miss, if I ever lef' you 'gen and gone off for work any ways else, you sen' for the sheriff en tie me. You ben good to me en ten' me, en den de debil mek me lef' yu fer mek' big money! en now look a' me! Yu ten' me en yu feed me des de same."
He is an uncommonly rich shade of black, so that his own mother always referred to him as "dat black nigger." Under constant and proper supervision he can be very useful, but he cannot make himself work every day. He must have a compelling hand and head behind him.
He has ten living children and a smart active young woman for his second wife. When we were planting largely of rice, he made a fine living, as he rented sixteen acres—he did the ploughing and his family the rest of the work. He had a splendid yoke of oxen, which he bought from us, and cows and another fine steer he had raised.
The changes in the conditions in the last few years I do not understand, but since McKinley's death steadily the negroes have declined in their responsibility and willingness to work until now their energies are spent in seeing how little they can do and still appear to work so as to secure a day's pay.
Elihu used to be a splendid ploughman, but this spring I had him to plough ten acres for me, breaking it up flush. The earth was barely scratched, I found afterward, though I paid him by the day instead of by the acre, fearing he would be tempted to hurry over it if I paid by the acre.
Forage was very scarce, and as long as he ploughed for me I told him to give his oxen all they could eat from the hay under the barn which was blown down. The two-story barn was packed full of hay, some of my best alfalfa, when the storm struck it. Of course it took some labor to get the hay out, and poor Elihu, after the mighty effort of ploughing one-half acre a day, could not make himself get out more than just enough to keep the oxen alive.
I had urged him from the beginning of the winter to make his children gather daily a certain quantity of the gray moss with which the oaks are laden and which cattle eat greedily; that would have kept his cows and oxen in good condition, but he never did it.