He could not speak of the new system with composure.  His contempt and hatred of the negro was unadulterated.  He spoke of the apprentices with great bitterness.  They were excessively lazy and impudent, and were becoming more and more so every day.  They did not do half the work now that they did before emancipation.  It was the character of the negro never to work unless compelled.  His people would not labor for him an hour in their own time, although he had offered to pay them for it.  They have not the least gratitude.  They will leave him in the midst of his crop, and help others, because they can get a little more.  They spend all their half Fridays and their Saturdays on other plantations where they receive forty cents a day.  Twenty-five cents is enough for them, and is as much as he will give.

Mr. B. requested the overseer to bring forward his complaints.  He had only two.  One was against a boy of ten for stealing a gill of goat’s milk.  The charge was disproved.  The other was against a boy of twelve for neglecting the cattle, and permitting them to trespass on the lands of a neighbor.  He was sentenced to receive a good switching—­that is, to be beaten with a small stick by the constable of the plantation.

Several apprentices then appeared and made a few trivial complaints against ‘busha.’  They were quickly adjusted.  These were all the complaints that had accumulated in five weeks.

The principal business which called Mr. Bourne to the plantation, as we have already remarked, was the appraisement of an apprentice.  The appraisers were himself and a local magistrate.  The apprentice was a native born African, and was stolen from his country when a boy.  He had always resided on this plantation, and had always been a faithful laborer.  He was now the constable, or driver, as the office was called in slavery times, of the second gang.  The overseer testified to his honesty and industry, and said he regretted much to have him leave.  He was, as appeared by the plantation books, fifty-four years old, but was evidently above sixty.  After examining several witnesses as to the old man’s ability and general health, and making calculations by the rule of three, with the cold accuracy of a yankee horse-bargain, it was decided that his services were worth to the plantation forty-eight dollars a years, and for the remaining time of the apprenticeship, consequently, at that rate, one hundred and fifty-six dollars.  One third of this was deducted as an allowance for the probabilities of death, and sickness, leaving one hundred and four dollars as the price of his redemption.  The old man objected strongly and earnestly to the price; he said, it was too much; he had not money enough to pay it; and begged them, with tears in his eyes, not to make him pay so much “for his old bones;” but they would not remit a cent.  They could not.  They were the stern ministers of the British emancipation law, the praises of which have been shouted through the earth!