They seemed to have poor success in keeping the money. At the very payment I have been describing, an old blind carpenter, (who, strangely enough, really earned ten dollars a month, in spite of his blindness, making hoe-handles, plow-handles, and the like,) lost his pocket-book. Next morning it was carefully placed under his door, but the money was all gone, with the exception of an old Confederate five-dollar bill, which had been considerately left behind. The next day the elder of a family of three girls took out her pocket-book, containing the money of all three, from its hiding place in the bed, to buy some candy. She replaced it at once, and went out of the cabin. On her return, a few minutes later, the pocket-book was gone, and the poor girls were twelve dollars poorer.
In general, the girls spent their money almost as soon as they got it. Most of the men were more economical. Some of them had a hundred or more dollars saved up.
The pay roll disclosed some quaint freaks of nomenclature. “They’ve had the greatest time picking names,” said the overseer. “No man thought he was perfectly free unless he had changed his name and taken a family name.” “Precious few of ’em,” he slily added, “ever took that of their old masters.”
One boy was called “’Squire Johnson Brown.” It seemed that his mother, “since dis time come,” (as they always say when they mean since their emancipation,) had chosen to call herself Brown; and, like a dutiful son, he thought it would be no more than respectable that his last name should be the same as his mother’s. But there was a ’Squire Johnson over on Black River, for whom he had a great regard; and, as he had a name to take, he insisted on taking Squire Johnson’s. This, however, was quite a minor performance compared with that of another boy, whose name was duly written down, “States Attorney Smith!”
Neither here nor at any point through the regions of the great plantations did I discover any such knowledge of their Northern benefactors as would naturally be evinced in names. There were no Abraham Lincolns among them; no Charles Summers; no Wendell Phillips; or Owen Lovejoys. There were plenty of Chases, but I could not find that any of them knew they bore the same name with the Chief-Justice, or had selected it with the slightest reference to him.
An old man, white-headed, with shrunken eyes and broken voice, came in. “If’t please you, sah, I hears as you’s ou’ new mastah. I’s old nigger on plantation, sah, an’ I’s come to ask you if you’d be so good as to please be so kin’ to ole nigger as has allus worked faithful all his days, as to git me a little piece o’ groun’ to plant co’n and punkins, to help keep me an’ ole ’oman?”
“O, yes, uncle, we’ll give you a garden.”
“But, sah, I’s got garden already, what ole mastah gib me, long time ago, and I’s allus had. But, mastah, you mus’ considah I’s got to buy my close now, an’ my shoes, an’ my hat, an’ my ole ’oman’s close; an’ I wants to make a little meat; an’ if you’d be so good as to please let me hab patch of groun’ for co’n an’ punkins besides.”
“How old are you, uncle?”
“Sebenty-five yeah, sah.”