their pay to cover the amount of corn due. I took over the money
due, with the pay-roll and corn-list. After a long talk on the part of
Pompey and John Major and others, which I listened to patiently, most
of them still refused to bring their corn. But I felt pretty sure that
when some began they would all do it, and so opened the door of the
corn-house and told the willing ones to bring in their corn. Jack came
first, then Katy, Louisa, and Moll. Pretty soon John Major came along
with a cart-load, and all the rest followed but Pompey. Then I began
to pay off the women for ginning and preparing their cotton. All went
smoothly except that Celia wanted her "yellow-cotton-money"[184]
"by himself," and as I couldn't tell exactly how much the
"yellow-cotton-money" was, I had to take her money all back and tell
her to go over and see Mr. G. After paying the others, however, Celia
came up and concluded to take her dues. They all took their money
excepting Pompey, who stoutly refused, and I came off without paying
him. Then came the talk about next year. I introduced Mr. York as
having leased the plantation for the year, which fact was received
with less dissatisfaction than I expected; but when it came to talk
about prices, which I left for Mr. York to settle, they all demanded
_a dollar a task_, evidently having been preparing their minds for
this for some time back. Then followed the usual amount of reasoning
on my part, enlarging upon the future uncertainty of prices of cotton,
etc., but we made little or no impression on them. They had evidently
been listening to an amount of talk about the wealth I had acquired at
their expense, and felt aggrieved that they were not making money as
fast as those who planted their own cotton, on Frogmore and other
places. I told them that the proceeds of last year's crop had all been
expended by me in carrying on this year's work, but they wouldn't
believe it. John Major said he knew very well they had been jamming
the bills into that big iron cage (meaning my safe at R.'s) for six
months, and there must be enough in it now to bust it! It had been
raining for the last half-hour pretty steadily, and we finally
withdrew, the choir of hands hanging about me, singing out "A dollar a
task!" "A dollar a task!" as we went off.

_Jan. 15._ I went out and introduced Mr. Jackson on Tuesday morning to
the Pine Grove people, who expressed very little surprise or feeling
of any kind, but met him with t