In this way he thought to train them in habits of voluntary industry and thrift; and some of them, having no necessary expenses to bear, accumulated very pretty little hoards of cash from the sale of their crops every year. But Phil would not raise a crop for himself.
“What I want to raise a crop for?” he would ask. “I don’ want no money, on’y a quarter sometimes to buy a banjo string or a fish line, an’ I get plenty o’ quarters pitched at me when I hol’ de gentlemen’s hosses. I don’ want no money, an’ I wouldn’t know what to do wid it if I had it. My mastah takes good care o’ me, an’s long as dar’s a piece o’ meat in de smokehouse, Phil knows he’s gwine to have plenty to eat. I ain’t gwine to earn no money an’ be cas’in’ ’flections on my mastah. My mastah gives me mo’ clo’es ’an I kin war out; an’ what de devil I want to be makin’ money for, I donno.”
It was of no use to argue the matter. His mind was quite made up, and there was no possibility of changing it.
Phil’s marital philosophy was unique. He changed wives half a dozen times while I knew him, but one set of rules governed his choice in every instance. There were certain qualifications of a rather singular sort, which he deemed essential in a wife. She must not live on the plantation for one thing, or on one of those immediately adjoining, “’Cause den we’re sho’ to see too much o’ one anoder, an’ ’ll git tired o’ de ’rangement.” In the second place he would marry none but old women, “’Cause de young ones is no ’count anyway. Dey don’ half take car’ o’ dey husban’s stockin’s and things. ’F you want holes in yer stockin’s an’ buttons off yer shut collahs, jes’ you marry a young gal.” The third requisite was that the wife should be a slave, and the daughter of slaves on both sides. This qualification he insisted upon, even in the choice of masculine associates. His contempt for “free niggas” was supreme, almost sublime. He neglected no possible opportunity of villifying them, and practised no sort of economy in his expenditure of invective upon them.
Most of the negroes—in Virginia, at least—were very religious. Naturally their religion was intensely emotional in its character,—ecstatic, sombre, gloomy,—and quite as naturally it was largely colored with superstition. But religion of this kind had no charm for Phil, who, as the reader may possibly have guessed, prided himself on being strictly logical in all his views and actions.
“Bro’ Ben,” he said to one of his fellows one day, “youse done got religion, I heah. Anyway, your face is twict as long as it ought to be. Has yer got religion fo’ sho’?”
“Now, Phil, I don’t want none o’ your wickedness. Bless de Lord, Ise got religion.”
“Oh, you is got it, is you? Now lemme ax yer a question or two. Youse got religion, yer say?”
Ben: “Yes, Ise got religion.”
Phil: “Well, den, you’re gwine to heaven after while—when yer dies?”