uproar, the scholars dodging about to escape the young pedagogue's stick, and the cook and other on-lookers roaring with laughter. One of his graduates asked his advice as to a course of reading, suggesting history as the branch that he wished to pursue. The youthful teacher promptly advised "Robinson Crusoe," and lent his own handsome copy to this promising pupil. After reading one hundred pages Joe came to him and said, "Mars Virginius, did you say dat book was history ?" Virginius explained as well as he could what fiction was, on which Joe said, " I bin mistrustin' all 'long dat some o' do things what Eobinson Crusoe say warn't true."
With negro slaves it seemed impossible for one of them to do a thing, it mattered not how insignificant, without the assistance of one or two others. It was often said with a laugh by their owners that it took two to help one to do nothing. It required a whole afternoon for Joe, the aspirant for historical knowledge, and another able-bodied man like himself, to butcher a sheep. On a plantation the work of the women and children, and of some of the men also, amounted to so little that but small effort was made to utilize it. Of course, some kind of occupation had to be devised to keep them employed a part of the time. But it was very laborious to find easy work for a large body of inefficient and lazy people, and at Burleigh the struggle was given up in many cases. The different departments would have been more easily and better managed if there had been fewer to work. Sometimes a friend would say" to the master that he made smaller crops than his negroes ought to make. His reply was that he did not desire them to do all that they could. The cook at Burleigh had always a scullion or two to help her, besides a man to cut her wood and put it
on the huge andirons.[1] The scullions brought the
- ↑ The cook's husband, who for years hurl looked on himself as nearly-blind, and therefore unable to do more than work about her, and put her wood on the lire, sometimes cutting a stick or two, made no less than eighteen good crops for himself when the war was over. He was one of the best farmers in the country. S. D. S.
