p before me, and
gave her a good gallop home. Having reached the house with the appetite of
a twenty-four miles' ride, I found no preparation for dinner, and not so
much as a boiled potato to eat, and the sole reply to my famished and
disconsolate exclamations was--'Being that you order none, missis, I not
know.' I had forgotten to order my dinner, and my _slaves_, unauthorised,
had not ventured to prepare any. Wouldn't a Yankee have said, 'Wal now,
you went off so uncommon quick, I kinder guessed you forgot all about
dinner,' and have had it all ready for me? But my slaves durst not, and so
I fasted till some tea could be got for me.

* * * * *

This was the last letter I wrote from the plantation, and I never returned
there, nor ever saw again any of the poor people among whom I lived during
this winter, but Jack, once, under sad circumstances. The poor lad's
health failed so completely, that his owners humanely brought him to the
north, to try what benefit he might derive from the change; but this was
before the passing of the Fugitive Slave Bill, when touching the soil of
the northern states, a slave became free; and such was the apprehension
felt lest Jack should be enlightened as to this fact by some philanthropic
abolitionist, that he was kept shut up in a high upper room of a large
empty house, where even I was not allowed to visit him. I heard at length
of his being in Philadelphia; and upon my distinct statement that I
considered freeing their slaves the business of the Messrs. ----
themselves, and not mine, I was at length permitted to see him. Poor
fellow! coming to the north did not prove to him the delight his eager
desire had so often anticipated from it; nor under such circumstances is
it perhaps much to be wondered at that he benefited but little by the
change,--he died not long after.

I once heard a conversation between Mr. O---- and Mr. K----, the two
overseers of the plantation on which I was living, upon the question of
taking slaves, servants, necessary attendants, into the northern states;
Mr. O---- urged the danger of their being 'got hold of,' i.e., set free
by the abolitionists, to which Mr. K---- very pertinently replied, 'Oh,
stuff and nonsense, I take care when my wife goes north with the children,
to send Lucy with her; _her children are down here, and I defy all the
abolitionists in creation to get her to stay north_.' Mr. K---- was an
extremely wise man