ive. I don't feel
a particle of sympathy for such cases. If they'd only behave themselves,
it would not happen."

"But, mamma," said Eva, "the poor creature was unhappy; that's what made
her drink."

"O, fiddlestick! as if that were any excuse! I'm unhappy, very often. I
presume," she said, pensively, "that I've had greater trials than ever
she had. It's just because they are so bad. There's some of them that
you cannot break in by any kind of severity. I remember father had a
man that was so lazy he would run away just to get rid of work, and lie
round in the swamps, stealing and doing all sorts of horrid things. That
man was caught and whipped, time and again, and it never did him any
good; and the last time he crawled off, though he couldn't but just go,
and died in the swamp. There was no sort of reason for it, for father's
hands were always treated kindly."

"I broke a fellow in, once," said St. Clare, "that all the overseers and
masters had tried their hands on in vain."

"You!" said Marie; "well, I'd be glad to know when _you_ ever did
anything of the sort."

"Well, he was a powerful, gigantic fellow,--a native-born African; and
he appeared to have the rude instinct of freedom in him to an uncommon
degree. He was a regular African lion. They called him Scipio. Nobody
could do anything with him; and he was sold round from overseer to
overseer, till at last Alfred bought him, because he thought he could
manage him. Well, one day he knocked down the overseer, and was fairly
off into the swamps. I was on a visit to Alf's plantation, for it was
after we had dissolved partnership. Alfred was greatly exasperated;
but I told him that it was his own fault, and laid him any wager that I
could break the man; and finally it was agreed that, if I caught him, I
should have him to experiment on. So they mustered out a party of some
six or seven, with guns and dogs, for the hunt. People, you know, can
get up as much enthusiasm in hunting a man as a deer, if it is only
customary; in fact, I got a little excited myself, though I had only put
in as a sort of mediator, in case he was caught.

"Well, the dogs bayed and howled, and we rode and scampered, and finally
we started him. He ran and bounded like a buck, and kept us well in the
rear for some time; but at last he got caught in an impenetrable thicket
of cane; then he turned to bay, and I tell you he fought the dogs right
gallantly. He dashed them to right and left, and