he remained in the proud and notorious position of
"Mossa Cutter's Larst Niggah."

* * * * *

In a certain part of Florida (obvious reasons will show themselves for
leaving it indefinite) I enjoyed the acquaintance of two Southern
gentlemen,--gentlemen, however, of widely different kinds. One was a
general, a lawyer, a rake, a drunkard, and white; the other was a
body-servant, a menial, an educated man, a fine man-of-business, a Sir
Roger in his manners, and black. The two had been brought up together,
the black having been given to the white gentleman during the latter's
second year. "They had played marbles in the same hole," the General
said. I know that Jim was unceasing in his attentions to his master, and
that his master could not have lived without them. A sort of attachment
of fidelity certainly did exist on Jim's side; and the most selfish man
must feel an attachment of need for the servant who could manage his
bank-account and superintend his entire interests much more successfully
than himself,--who could tend him without complaint through a week's
sleeplessness, when he had the horrors,--who was in fact, to all intents
and purposes, his own only responsible manifestation to the world.

Jim's wife was dead, but had left him two sons and a daughter. When I
first saw him, none of them had been sold from him. The boys were
respectively eighteen and twenty years old. Their sister had just turned
sixteen, and was a nice-looking, modest, mulatto girl, whom her father
idolized because she was looking more and more every day "like de oder
Sally dat's gone, Mossa."

A week after he said that to me, Sally on earth might well have prayed
to Sally in heaven to take her, for she was sold away into the horrors
of concubinage to one of the wickedest men on the river.

To describe the result of this act upon Jim is beyond my power, if
indeed my heart would allow me to repeat such sorrow. It was not
violent,--but, O South, South, lying on a volcano, if all your negroes
had been violent, how much better for you!

Jim, I hear they intend to give you a rifle!

Well, as to that, I remember Jim had heard of such things.

Boarding at the same hotel with the General, I sat also at the same
table. When he was well enough to come down to his meals, he occupied
the third chair below me on the opposite side.

One night, when all the boarders but ourselves had left the tea-room,
the General, bein