'But, Tom,' I inquired; 'I suppose you sometimes had to flog the slaves?'

'Never touched a one of them, never! 'T wan't no use. Made 'em do just as I wanted without striking a blow.'

'Why, how did you do it?'

'I've told you how I did it. I set some of them to oversee the rest. They thrashed them; I didn't. If they failed in their tasks, I talked to them in this way,' (and he turned his wicked eye on me with a merry twinkle,) 'I called out the overseer, and spoke to him so that the rest could hear me; I said to him: 'Dick,' or 'Jeff,' or whatever his name was, 'how is this? I set you a task this morning that you could do easy enough. Why isn't it done? Some of your hands have been lazy. Now, mind, this won't do. I don't want to punish you, but I see I'll have to do it.' Then turning to the hands: 'Boys, what have you been so lazy for? You don't want Jeff licked, do you? Why don't you work like men, and finish the tasks I set you? You black devils, you! if you keep on in this way you will always be niggars; but if you work, and do as you ought to, you will get as white as I am, after a while!'

'This course generally had the desired effect; but I clinched the argument by threatening to withhold their whisky rations if they failed in their work.'

'Then you gave them whisky rations, did you?'

'Yes. Every Saturday night, if they had behaved well during the week, I gave them a keg of whisky to keep Sunday with. We locked up the tools, and the supplies, and in fact the houses. My room was bolted and barred like a state's prison, and I had a complete arsenal of guns, swords, and ammunition. And then they had a regular 'drunk' on Sunday. The keg held just enough, and not a drop over. They divided it out among themselves, by measurement, and it was all gone in time for them to get over the effects of it before Monday morning.'

'Don't you think,' I inquired, 'that the expected whisky rations was quite as great a stimulus to their exertions as your philosophical exhortations?'

'Perhaps it was. But you must recollect that the whisky rations formed a part of my lecture, and were always introduced as a clincher. I was the most popular overseer ever on the plantation, and when I left the darkies cried like babies. Talbot raised my wages to twelve hundred dollars, dating from the time I went there, and I performed the whole duties of overseer without any assistance.'

'And how did you come to leave so agreeable and profitable an employment?'