'I hope you'll take no offence,' I replied, 'but it appears to me there must be some other reason. He has only half your number.'

'Well, I will tell you how he and I manage, and you can judge for yourself. Dawsey has seventy-five slaves; forty child-bearing women, twenty men, and fifteen children under five years. The sixty adults are all prime hands. They are given daily tasks, which they cannot possibly do in less than fifteen hours, leaving them only nine hours out of the twenty-four for eating, sleeping, feeding their children, and the waking rest necessary to working people. He never whips them on a week day, because it wastes working time, but makes Sunday a general flogging season. He has two women where he has one man, and each woman is expected to bear a child a year. If she doesn't, she is sold. They are made to work in the field till the labor pains are on them; and they are allowed only two weeks' rest after confinement. Three of them have borne children in the woods this season. He keeps only one nurse for the fifteen children, and as soon as each child is five years old—the age at which it can be legally sold away from its mother—it is disposed of to the traders. In addition, three of these women are his own mistresses and they are expected to have children as fast as the others. He serves their children like the rest; that is, rears them to the age of five, and then sells them as he would so many hogs.'

'My God!' I exclaimed, 'he's a monster.'

'There are different opinions about that. Dawsey passes for a jovial good fellow; keeps open house for his friends; spends money freely at the elections, and two years ago 'got religion' at a camp meeting. He merely regards his slaves as chattels, and manages his plantation in perhaps the only way that is profitable in an old section of country like this.'

'And how is it with you? How do you manage?' I asked.

'Leff me tell, master Robert,' said the black, smiling. 'I knows all de 'ticulars 'bout dat.'

'Well, go on,' said Preston, laughing, 'but don't be too hard on me.'

'We hab,' continued the black, 'countin' me in, a hundred an' fifty-one darkies, all in fam'lies—faders, mudders, children, and some on 'em gran'faders and gran'mudders,'most all born on de plantation, an' some on 'em livin' on it fur forty, fifty, sixty, an' seventy yar. Out ob dese, we hab only forty-two full hands, 'case some ob de wimmin dat come in de ages fur full wuck am sickly, puny tings, only fit fur house wuck or nussin'. From de whole I gits equal to fifty-four full hands. 'Cordin' to master Robert's direction, I gib 'em easy ten-hour tasks; but suffin' or anoder turn up 'most ebery day, so dat 'bout half on 'em don't do full wuck, an' I reckon dey don't make, on de whole, more'n 'bout nine hour a day. So you see, Cunnel Dawsey, he hab sixty, an' he wuck em fifteen hour a day; we hab only fifty-four, an' we wuck 'em nine hour a day; an' 'cordin' to my 'rithmetic, dat would make de Cunnel turn out 'bout twice as much truck as we does.'

'And you have twice as many mouths to feed as he,' I remarked; 'and the result is he makes money, while you—'

'Lose nigh onter two thousand a year, Mr. Kirke, an' hab done it ebery yar fur five yar, eber since master Robert come on to de plantation, an' gwo to workin' on human principles, as he calls 'em.'