NEGRO LIFE IN AMERICA. | 55

him along, and not sayin’ nothin’; and I'd got him nicely
swapped off for a keg of whiskey ; but come to get him away from
the gal, she was jest like a tiger. So ‘twas before we started,
and I hadn't got my gang chained up, so what should she do but
ups on a cotton-bale, like a cat, ketches a knife from one of the
deck hands, and, I tell ye, she made all fly fora minit, till she
saw ‘twa'nt no use; aud she jest turns round and pitches head
first, young un and all, into the river—went down plump, and
never ris.” 7

« Bah,” said Tom Loker, who had listened to these stories with
ill-repressed disgust. ‘‘ Shif'less, both on ye ! My gals don’t cut
up no such shines, I tell ye!”

«“ Indeed! how do you help it?” said Marks briskly.

“ Help it? why, I buys a gal, and if she’s got a young un to
be sold, I jest walks up and puts my fist to her face, and says,
‘Look here, now; if you give me one word out of your head, I'll
smash your face in. I won't hear one word—not the beginning
of a word.’ Isaysto’em, ’This yer young un’s mine, and not
yourn, and youv’e no kind ‘o business with it. I’m going to sell
it, first chance; mind you don't cut up none ’o yer shines about
it, or I'll make ye wish ye’d never been born.’ I tell ye, they sees
it an’t no play, when I gets hold. 1 makes ‘em as whist as
fishes; and if one of ‘em begins and gives a yelp, why—" and
Mr, Loker brought down his fist with a thump that fully explained
the hiatus.

“That ar’s what ye may call emphasis,” said Marks, poking
Haley in the side, and going into another small giggle. ‘‘ An't
Tom peculiar? he! he! he! I say, Tom, I s’pect you make ‘em
understand, for all niggers’ heads is woolly. They don't never
have no doubt o’ your meaning, Tom. If you an’t the devil,
Tom, you's his twin brother, I'll say that for ye.”

Tom received the compliment with becoming modesty, and
began to look as affable as was consistent, as John Bunyan says,
‘‘ with his doggish nature.” |

Haley, who had been imbibing very freely of the staple of the
evening, began to feel a sensible elevation and enlargement of his
moral faculties—a phenomenon not unusual with gentlemen of a
serious and reflective turn, under similar circumstances.

“Wal, now, Tom,” he said, “ye reily is too bad, as I alays
have told you. Ye know, Tom, you and I used to talk over these
yer matters down in Natchez, and I used to prove to ye that we

made full as much, and was as well off for this yer world, by

treatin’ on ’em well, besides keepin’ a better chance for comin’ in
the kingdom at last, when wust comes to wust, and thar an't

nothing else left to get, ye know.”
« Boh!’ said Tom, “ don’t I know?—don’t make me too sick

with any yer stuff—my stomach is a leetle riled now;” and Tom
drank half a glass of raw brandy.