Jim said nothing, but gave a quiet laugh, showing no sort of fear, and we entered the carriage. I afterwards learned from him that he had never been whipped, and that all the negroes on the plantation obeyed the lady when, which was seldom, her orders came in conflict with their master's. They knew if they did not, the Colonel would whip them.
As we rode slowly along the Colonel said to me, 'Well, you see that the best people have to flog their niggers sometimes.'
'Yes, I should have given that fellow a hundred lashes, at least. I think the effect on the others would have been bad if Madam P—— had not had him flogged.'
'But she generally goes against it. I don't remember of her having it done in ten years before. And yet, though I've the worst gang of niggers in the district, they obey her like so many children.'
'Why is that?'
'Well, there's a kind of magnetism about her that makes everybody love her; and then she tends them in sickness, and is constantly doing little things for their comfort; that attaches them to her. She is an extraordinary woman.'
'Whose negroes are those, Colonel?' I asked, as, after a while, we passed a gang of about a dozen, at work near the roadside. Some were tending a tar-kiln, and some engaged in cutting into fire-wood the pines which a recent tornado had thrown to the ground.
'They are mine, but they are working now for themselves. I let such as will, work on Sunday. I furnish the "raw material," and pay them for what they do, as I would a white man.'
'Would'nt it be better to make them go to hear the old preacher; could'nt they learn something from him?'
'Not much; Old Pomp never read anything but the Bible, and he don't understand that; besides, they can't be taught. You can't make "a whistle out of a pig's tail;" you can't make a nigger into a white man.'