women, I reckon about twenty per cent.'

'And what does it cost you to support each hand?'

'Well, it costs _me_, for children and all, about seventy-five dollars a
year. In some places it costs less. _I_ have to buy all my provisions.'

'What proportion of your slaves are able-bodied hands?'

'Somewhere about sixty per cent. I have, all told, old and young,--men,
women, and children,--two hundred and seventy. Out of that number I have
now equal to a hundred and fifty-four _full_ hands. You understand that
we classify them: some do only half tasks, some three-quarters. I have
_more_ than a hundred and fifty-four working men and women, but they do
only that number of full tasks.'

'What does the labor of a _full_ hand yield?'

'At the present price of turpentine, my calculation is about two hundred
dollars a year.'

'Then your crop brings you about thirty-one thousand dollars, and the
support of your negroes costs you twenty thousand.'

'Yes.'

'If that's the case, my friend, let me advise you to sell your
plantation, free your niggers, and go North.'

'Why so, my dear fellow?' asked the Colonel, laughing.

'Because you'd make money by the operation.'

'I never was good at arithmetic; go into the figures,' he replied, still
laughing, while Madam P----, who had laid aside her book, listened very
attentively.

'Well, you have two hundred and seventy negroes, whom you value, we'll
say, with your mules, "stills," and movable property, at two hundred
thousand dollars; and twenty thousand acres of land, worth about three
dollars and a half an acre; all told, two hundred and seventy thousand
dollars. A hundred and fifty-four able-bodied hands produce you a yearly
profit of eleven thousand dollars, which, saying nothing about the cost
of keeping your live stock, the wear and tear of your mules and
machinery, and the yearly loss of your slaves by death, is only four per
cent. on your capital. Now, with only the price of your land, say
seventy thousand dollars, invested in safe stocks at the North, you
could realize eight per cent.--five thousand six hundred dollars,--and
live at your ease; and that, I judge, if you have many runaways, or many
die on your hands, is as much as you really _clear_ now. Besides, if you
should invest seventy thousand dollars in almost any legitimate business
at the North, and should add to it, _as you now do_, your _time_ and
_labor_, you would realize far more than you do at present fr