may do so), and exercises all functions of undisputed mastery over his fellow slaves, for you will observe that all this while he is just as much a slave as any of the rest.  Trustworthy, upright, intelligent, he may be flogged to-morrow if Mr. O——­ or Mr. ——­ so please it, and sold the next day like a cart horse, at the will of the latter.  Besides his various other responsibilities, he has the key of all the stores, and gives out the people’s rations weekly; nor is it only the people’s provisions that are put under his charge—­meat, which is only given out to them occasionally, and provisions for the use of the family are also entrusted to his care.  Thus you see, among these inferior creatures, their own masters yet look to find, surviving all their best efforts to destroy them—­good sense, honesty, self-denial, and all the qualities, mental and moral, that make one man worthy to be trusted by another.  From the imperceptible, but inevitable effect of the sympathies and influences of human creatures towards and over each other, Frank’s intelligence has become uncommonly developed by intimate communion in the discharge of his duty with the former overseer, a very intelligent man, who has only just left the estate, after managing it for nineteen years; the effect of this intercourse, and of the trust and responsibility laid upon the man, are that he is clear-headed, well judging, active, intelligent, extremely well mannered, and, being respected, he respects himself.  He is as ignorant as the rest of the slaves; but he is always clean and tidy in his person, with a courteousness of demeanour far removed from servility, and exhibits a strong instance of the intolerable and wicked injustice of the system under which he lives, having advanced thus far towards improvement, in spite of all the bars it puts to progress; and here being arrested, not by want of energy, want of sense, or any want of his own, but by being held as another man’s property, who can only thus hold him by forbidding him further improvement.  When I see that man, who keeps himself a good deal aloof from the rest, in his leisure hours looking, with a countenance of deep thought, as I did to-day, over the broad river, which is to him as a prison wall, to the fields and forest beyond, not one inch or branch of which his utmost industry can conquer as his own, or acquire and leave an independent heritage to his children, I marvel what the thoughts of such a man may be.  I was in his house to-day, and the same superiority in cleanliness, comfort, and propriety exhibited itself in his dwelling, as in his own personal appearance, and that of his wife—­a most active, trustworthy, excellent woman, daughter of the oldest, and probably most highly respected of all Mr. ——­’s slaves.  To the excellent conduct of this woman, and indeed every member of her family, both the present and the last overseer bear unqualified testimony.