‘What does the labor of a full hand yield?’

’At the present price of turpentine, my calculation is about two hundred dollars a year.’

’Then your crop brings you about thirty-one thousand dollars, and the support of your negroes costs you twenty thousand.’

‘Yes.’

’If that’s the case, my friend, let me advise you to sell your plantation, free your niggers, and go North.’

‘Why so, my dear fellow?’ asked the Colonel, laughing.

‘Because you’d make money by the operation.’

‘I never was good at arithmetic; go into the figures,’ he replied, still laughing, while Madam P——­, who had laid aside her book, listened very attentively.

’Well, you have two hundred and seventy negroes, whom you value, we’ll say, with your mules, “stills,” and movable property, at two hundred thousand dollars; and twenty thousand acres of land, worth about three dollars and a half an acre; all told, two hundred and seventy thousand dollars.  A hundred and fifty-four able-bodied hands produce you a yearly profit of eleven thousand dollars, which, saying nothing about the cost of keeping your live stock, the wear and tear of your mules and machinery, and the yearly loss of your slaves by death, is only four per cent. on your capital.  Now, with only the price of your land, say seventy thousand dollars, invested in safe stocks at the North, you could realize eight per cent.—­five thousand six hundred dollars,—­and live at your ease; and that, I judge, if you have many runaways, or many die on your hands, is as much as you really clear now.  Besides, if you should invest seventy thousand dollars in almost any legitimate business at the North, and should add to it, as you now do, your time and labor, you would realize far more than you do at present from your entire capital.’

’I never looked at the matter in that light.  But I have given you my profits as they now are; some years I make more; six years ago I made twenty-five thousand dollars.’

‘Yes; and six years hence you may make nothing.’

‘That’s true.  But it would cost me more to live at the North.’

’There you are mistaken.  What do you pay for your corn, your pork, and your hay, for instance?’

’Well, my corn I have to bring round by vessel from Washington (North Carolina), and it costs me high when it gets here,—­about ten bits (a dollar and twenty-five cents), I think.’

’And in New York you could buy it now at sixty to seventy cents.  What does your hay cost?’

’Thirty-five dollars.  I pay twenty for it in New York,—­the balance is freight and hauling.’

’Your pork costs you two or three dollars, I suppose, for freight and hauling.’

‘Yes; about that.’

’Then in those items you might save nearly a hundred per cent.; and they are the principal articles you consume.’

’Yes; there’s no denying that.  But another thing is just as certain:  it costs less to support one of my niggers than one of your laboring men.’