The conditions were all favorable to story-telling.  There was an autumnal languor in the air, and a dreamy haze softened the dark green of the distant pines and the deep blue of the Southern sky.  The generous meal he had made had put the old man in a very good humor.  He was not always so, for his curiously undeveloped nature was subject to moods which were almost childish in their variableness.  It was only now and then that we were able to study, through the medium of his recollection, the simple but intensely human inner life of slavery.  His way of looking at the past seemed very strange to us; his view of certain sides of life was essentially different from ours.  He never indulged in any regrets for the Arcadian joyousness and irresponsibility which was a somewhat popular conception of slavery; his had not been the lot of the petted house-servant, but that of the toiling field-hand.  While he mentioned with a warm appreciation the acts of kindness which those in authority had shown to him and his people, he would speak of a cruel deed, not with the indignation of one accustomed to quick feeling and spontaneous expression, but with a furtive disapproval which suggested to us a doubt in his own mind as to whether he had a right to think or to feel, and presented to us the curious psychological spectacle of a mind enslaved long after the shackles had been struck off from the limbs of its possessor.  Whether the sacred name of liberty ever set his soul aglow with a generous fire; whether he had more than the most elementary ideas of love, friendship, patriotism, religion,—­things which are half, and the better half, of life to us; whether he even realized, except in a vague, uncertain way, his own degradation, I do not know.  I fear not; and if not, then centuries of repression had borne their legitimate fruit.  But in the simple human feeling, and still more in the undertone of sadness, which pervaded his stories, I thought I could see a spark which, fanned by favoring breezes and fed by the memories of the past, might become in his children’s children a glowing flame of sensibility, alive to every thrill of human happiness or human woe.

“Dave use’ ter b’long ter my ole marster,” said Julius; “he wuz raise’ on dis yer plantation, en I kin ’member all erbout ’im, fer I wuz ole ‘nuff ter chop cotton w’en it all happen’.  Dave wuz a tall man, en monst’us strong:  he could do mo’ wuk in a day dan any yuther two niggers on de plantation.  He wuz one er dese yer solemn kine er men, en nebber run on wid much foolishness, like de yuther darkies.  He use’ ter go out in de woods en pray; en w’en he hear de han’s on de plantation cussin’ en gwine on wid dere dancin’ en foolishness, he use’ ter tell ’em ’bout religion en jedgmen’-day, w’en dey would haf ter gin account fer eve’y idle word en all dey yuther sinful kyarin’s-on.