dan any oder time of year, dough we work so hard den. I wish it was grinding season all de year roun'—only Sundays."
"Why?"
"Because—oh, because it's merry and lively. All de brack people like it when we begin to grind."
"You have to keep grinding Sundays?"
"Yes, can't stop, when we begin to grind, till we get tru."
"You don't often work Sundays, except then?"
"No, massa! nebber works Sundays, except when der crap's weedy, and we want to get tru 'fore rain comes; den, wen we work a Sunday, massa gives us some oder day for holiday—Monday, if we get tru."
He said that, on the French plantations, they oftener work Sundays than on the American. They used to work almost always on Sundays, on the French plantations, when he was first brought to Louisiana; but they did not so much now.
We were passing a hamlet of cottages, occupied by Acadians, or what the planters call habitans, poor white French Creoles. The negroes had always been represented to me to despise the habitans, and to look upon them as their own inferiors; but William spoke of them respectfully; and, when I tempted him to sneer at their indolence and vagabond habits, refused to do so, but insisted very strenuously that they were "very good people," orderly and industrious. He assured me that I was mistaken in supposing that the Creoles, who did not own slaves, did not live comfortably, or that they did not work as hard as they ought for their living. There were no better sort of people than they were, he thought.
He again recurred to the fortunate condition of the negroes on his master's plantation. He thought it was the best plantation in the State, and he did not believe there was a better lot of negroes in the State; some few of them, whom his master had brought from his former plantation, were old; but
