And to-morrow, Jeffrey and Dorcas are to say their tearful farewell, and go their separate ways in life, to meet no more as mortal beings.
But didn't Mr. Pierce Butler give them a silver dollar a-piece? Who shall say there is no magnanimity in slave-owners?
In another hour I see Dorcas in the long room, sitting motionless as a statue, with her head covered with a shawl. And I see Jeffrey, who goes to his new master, pulls off his hat and says: "I'se very much obliged, Mas'r, to you for tryin' to help me. I knows you would have done it if you could—thank you, Mas'r—thank you—but—its—berry—hard"—and here the poor fellow breaks down entirely and walks away, covering his face with his battered hat, and sobbing like a very child.
He is soon surrounded by a group of his colored friends, who, with an instinctive delicacy most unlooked for, stand quiet, and with uncovered heads, about him.
Anson and Violet, chattels Nos. 111 and 112, were sold for $250 each, both being old, and Anson being down in the catalogue as "ruptured and as having one eye." Violet was sold as being sick. Her disease was probably consumption, which supposition gave rise to the following feeling conversation between two buyers:
"Cheap gal, that, Major!"
"Don't think so. They may talk about her being sick; it's no easy sickness she's got. She's got consumption, and the man that buys her'll have to be a doctrin' her all the time, and she'll die in less than three months. I won't have anything to do with her—don't want any half dead niggers about me."
THE MARKET VALUE OF AN EYE.
Guy, chattel No. 419, "a prime young man," sold for $1,280, being without blemish; his age was twenty years, and he was altogether a fine article. His next-door neighbor, Andrew, chattel No. 420, was his very counterpart in all marketable points, in size, age, skill, and everything save that he had lost his right eye. Andrew sold for only $1,040, from which we argue that the market value of the right eye in the Southern country is $240.