Not having any, he remained in the proud and notorious position of "Mossa Cutter's Larst Niggah."
In a certain part of Florida (obvious reasons will show themselves for leaving it indefinite) I enjoyed the acquaintance of two Southern gentlemen,—gentlemen, however, of widely different kinds. One was a general, a lawyer, a rake, a drunkard, and white; the other was a body-servant, a menial, an educated man, a fine man-of-business, a Sir Roger in his manners, and black. The two had been brought up together, the black having been given to the white gentleman during the latter's second year. "They had played marbles in the same hole," the General said. I know that Jim was unceasing in his attentions to his master, and that his master could not have lived without them. A sort of attachment of fidelity certainly did exist on Jim's side; and the most selfish man must feel an attachment of need for the servant who could manage his bank-account and superintend his entire interests much more successfully than himself,—who could tend him without complaint through a week's sleeplessness, when he had the horrors,—who was in fact, to all intents and purposes, his own only responsible manifestation to the world.
Jim's wife was dead, but had left him two sons and a daughter. When I first saw him, none of them had been sold from him. The boys were respectively eighteen and twenty years old. Their sister had just turned sixteen, and was a nice-looking, modest, mulatto girl, whom her father idolized because she was looking more and more every day "like de oder Sally dat's gone, Mossa."
A week after he said that to me, Sally on earth might well have prayed to Sally in heaven to take her, for she was sold away into the horrors of concubinage to one of the wickedest men on the river.
To describe the result of this act upon Jim is beyond my power, if indeed my heart would allow me to repeat such sorrow. It was not violent,—but, O South, South, lying on a volcano, if all your negroes had been violent, how much better for you!
Jim, I hear they intend to give you a rifle!
Well, as to that, I remember Jim had heard of such things.
Boarding at the same hotel with the General, I sat also at the same table. When he was well enough to come down to his meals, he occupied the third chair below me on the opposite side.
One night, when all the boarders but ourselves had left the tea-room, the General, being confidentially sober, (I say sober, for when he reached the confidential he was on the rising scale,) began talking politics with me.