For the first time Tom hesitated; and he answered, with an uneasy expression and a furtive glancing about of his keen hazel eye, that he had been an overseer on a plantation.
'The devil!' I exclaimed, rather abruptly.
'It is a fact,' said the plain-spoken Tom, looking seriously into his empty glass, then adding apologetically:
'What should I care about it? I had lived a long time in Kentucky, and been accustomed to slavery as it existed there. Besides, I am a Marylander by birth. I said slavery was right, and I believed it. My wife was dead; I had little means left, and cared for nothing.
'I had become acquainted with Luke Meminger, the principal negro-dealer at Lexington, who boarded at McGowan's Hotel, where I was then stopping, and he introduced me to a Mississippi planter' who was there buying a few hands for his plantation back of Grand Gulf. Talbot (that was the planter's name) seemed to take a fancy to me, and finally proposed to me to go with him to Mississippi and serve as assistant overseer. He offered me a salary of eight hundred dollars a year; said I should have a horse to ride over the plantation, a servant to wait on me, and an easy time of it generally. I accepted the offer, and accompanied him down the river. We took down fifteen niggars whom he had purchased in Kentucky, mostly at Lexington. I was there two years, and left heartily sick of it.'
'Well, that is an episode in your history, Tom,' I said, 'that I could never have imagined. But now you must tell me something about plantation life. I have heard and read a great deal about it, but never had it from the mouth of an old friend on whose word I could rely, and who possessed the advantage of having been an overseer himself.'
'Oh! there is very little to tell,' said Tom. 'I had to set the niggars at work and see that they performed their tasks; that was all.'
'Well, what crops did you cultivate?'
'Cotton.'
'How many hands did you work?'