itering during
the entire day. If the slave exceeded the quantity required of him,
the excess was sometimes placed to his credit and deducted from a
subsequent day. This was by no means the universal custom. Sometimes
he received a small present or was granted some especial favor. By
some masters the stint was increased by the addition of the excess.
The task was always regulated by the condition of the cotton in the
field. Where it would sometimes be three hundred pounds, at others it
would not exceed one hundred.

At the time I commenced my cotton-picking, the circumstances were not
favorable to a large return. The picking season begins in August or
September, and is supposed to end before Christmas. In my case it was
late in January, and the winter rain had washed much of the cotton
from the stalks. Under the circumstances I could not expect more than
fifty or seventy-five pounds per day for each person engaged.

During the first few days I did not weigh the cotton. I knew the
average was not more than fifty pounds to each person, but the
estimates which the negroes made fixed it at two hundred pounds. One
night I astonished them by taking the weighing apparatus to the field
and carefully weighing each basket. There was much disappointment
among all parties at the result. The next day's picking showed a
surprising improvement. After that time, each day's work was tested
and the result announced. The "tell-tale," as the scales were
sometimes called, was an overseer from whom there was no escape. I
think the negroes worked faithfully as soon as they found there was no
opportunity for deception.

I was visited by Mrs. B.'s agent a few days after I became a
cotton-planter. We took an inventory of the portable property that
belonged to the establishment, and arranged some plans for our mutual
advantage. This agent was a resident of Natchez. He was born in the
North, but had lived so long in the slave States that his sympathies
were wholly Southern. He assured me the negroes were the greatest
liars in the world, and required continual watching. They would take
every opportunity to neglect their work, and were always planning new
modes of deception. They would steal every thing of which they could
make any use, and many articles that they could not possibly dispose
of. Pretending illness was among the most frequent devices for
avoiding labor, and the overseer was constantly obliged to contend
against such deception. In