Remarking, one day, at the house of a woman who was brought up at the North, that there was much more comfort at her house than any we had previously stopped at, she told us that the only reason the people didn’t have any comfort here was, that they wouldn’t take any trouble to get anything. Anything that their negroes could make they would eat; but they would take no pains to instruct them, or to get anything that didn’t grow on the plantation. A neighbour of hers owned fifty cows, she supposed, but very rarely had any milk and scarcely ever any butter, simply because his people were too lazy to milk or churn, and he wouldn’t take the trouble to make them.
This woman entirely sustained the assertion that Northern people, when they come to the South, have less feeling for the negroes than Southerners themselves usually have. We asked her (she lived in a village) whether she hired or owned her servants. They owned them all, she said. When they first came to Texas they hired servants, but it was very troublesome; they would take no interest in anything; and she couldn’t get along with them. Then very often their owners, on some pretext (ill-treatment, perhaps), would take them away. Then they bought negroes. It was very expensive: a good negro girl cost seven or eight hundred dollars, and that, we must know, was a great deal of money to be laid out in a thing that might lie right down the next day and die. They were not much better either than the hired servants.
Folks up North talked about how badly the negroes were treated; she wished they could see how much work her girls did. She had four of them, and she knew they didn’t do half so much work as one good Dutch girl such as she used to have at the North. Oh! the negroes were the laziest things in creation; there was no knowing how much trouble they gave to look after them. Up to the North, if a girl went out into the garden for anything, when she came back she would clean her feet, but these nigger girls will stump right in and track mud all over the house. What do they care? They’d just as lief clean the mud after themselves as anything else—their time isn’t any value to themselves. What do they care for the trouble it gives you? Not a bit. And you may scold ’em and whip ’em—you never can break ’em into better habits.
I asked what were servants’ wages when they were hired out to do housework? They were paid seven or eight dollars a month; sometimes ten. She didn’t use to pay her girl at the North but four dollars, and she knew she would do more work than any six of the niggers, and not give half so much trouble as one. But you couldn’t get any other help here but niggers. Northern folks talk about abolishing slavery, but there wouldn’t be any use in that; that would be ridiculous, unless you could some way get rid of the niggers. Why, they’d murder us all in our beds—that’s what they’d do. Why, over to Fannin, there was a negro woman that killed her mistress with an axe, and her two little ones. The people just flocked together, and hung her right up on the spot; they ought to have piled some wood round her, and burned her to death; that would have been a good lesson to the rest. We afterwards heard her scolding one of her girls, the girl made some exculpatory reply, and getting the best of the argument, the mistress angrily told her if she said another word she would have two hundred lashes given her. She came in and remarked that if she hadn’t felt so nervous she would have given that girl a good whipping herself; these niggers are so saucy, it’s very trying to one who has to take care of them.
Servants are, it is true, “a trial,” in all lands, ages, and nations. But note the fatal reason this woman frankly gives for the inevitable delinquencies of slave-servants, “Their time isn’t any value to themselves!”
The women of Eastern Texas seemed to us, in general, far superior to their lords. They have, at least, the tender hearts and some of the gentle delicacy that your “true Texan” lacks, whether mistresses of slaves, or only of their own frying-pan. They are overworked, however, as soon as married, and care gives them thin faces, sallow complexions, and expressions either sad or sour.
Another night we spent at the house of a man who came here, when a boy, from the North. His father was a mechanic, and had emigrated to Texas just before the war of Independence. He joined the army, and his son had been brought up—rather had grown up—Southern fashion, with no training to regular industry. He had learned no trade. What need? His father received some thousand acres of land in payment of his services. The son earned some money by driving a team; bought some cattle, took a wife, and a house, and now had been settled six years, with a young family. He had nothing to do but look after his cattle, go to the nearest town and buy meal and coffee occasionally, and sell a few oxen when the bill was sent in. His house was more comfortless than nine-tenths of the stables of the North. There were several windows, some of which were boarded over, some had wooden shutters, and some were entirely open. There was not a pane of glass. The doors were closed with difficulty. We could see the stars, as we lay in bed, through the openings of the roof; and on all sides, in the walls of the room, one’s arm might be thrust out. Notwithstanding, that night the mercury fell below 25° of our Fahrenheit thermometer. There was the standard food and beverage, placed before us night and morning. We asked if there was much game near him? There were a great many deer. He saw them every day. Did he shoot many? He never shot any; ’twas too much trouble. When he wanted “fresh,” ’twas easier to go out and stick a hog (the very words he used). He had just corn enough to give our horses one feed—there was none left for the morning. His own horses could get along through the winter on the prairie. He made pets of his children, but was cross and unjust to his wife, who might have been pretty, and was affectionate. He was without care—thoughtless, content, with an unoccupied mind. He took no newspaper—he read nothing. There was, indeed, a pile of old books which his father had brought from the North, but they seemed to be all of the Tract Society sort, and the dust had been undisturbed upon them, it might have been, for many years.
Manchac Spring.—We found a plantation that would have done no discredit to Virginia. The house was large and well constructed, standing in a thick grove, separated from the prairie by a strong worm-fence. Adjacent, within, was the spring, which deserved its prominence of mention upon the maps. It had been tastefully grottoed with heavy limestone rocks, now water-stained and mossy, and the pure stream came gurgling up, in impetuous gallons, to pour itself in a bright current out upon the prairie. The fountains of Italy were what came to mind, and “Fontana de Manciocco” would have secured a more natural name.
Everything about the house was orderly and neat. The proprietor came out to receive us, and issued orders about the horses, which we felt, from their quiet tone, would be obeyed without our supervision. When we were ushered into a snug supper-room and found a clean table set with wheat-bread, ham, tea, and preserved fruits, waited on by tidy and ready girls, we could scarce think we had not got beyond the bounds of Texas. We were, in fact, quit, for some time to come, of the lazy poverty of Eastern Texas.