One day Marse Harris was passing by the jail.  It was hot weather, and the jail windows were open.  Behind the bars of one window, looking down upon the street, stood a negro prisoner.  As Marse Harris passed this window a negro wearing a large watch chain came by in the other direction.  His watch chain evidently caught the eye of the prisoner, who spoke in a wistful tone, demanding: 

“What tahme is it, brotha?”

“What foh you want t’ know what tahme it is?” returned the other sternly, as he continued upon his way.  “You ain’t goin’ nowhere.”

Through Marse Harris I obtained a copy of a letter written by a negro named Walter to Mr. W.H.  Reeve of Vicksburg.  Walter had looked out for Mr. Reeve’s live stock during a flood, and had certain ideas about what should be done for him in consequence.  I give the letter exactly as it was written, merely inserting, parenthetically, a few explanatory words: 

Mr. H W Reeve an bos dear sir I like to git me a par [pair] second hand pance dont a fail or elce I will be dout [without] a pare to go eny where so send me something.  Dont a fail an send me a par of youre pance [or] i will hafter go to work for somebody to git some.  I don’t think you all is treating me right at all I stayed with youre hogs in the water till the last tening [attending] to them and I dont think that youre oder [ought to] fail me bout a pare old pance

     WALTER

Though I cannot see just why it should be so, it seemed to us that the Vicksburg negroes were happier than those of any other place we visited.  Whether drowsing in the sun, walking the streets, doing a little stroke of work, fishing, or sitting gabbling on the curbstone, they were upon the whole as cheerful and as comical a lot of people as I ever saw.

“Wha’ you-all goin’ to?” I heard a negro ask a group of mulatto women, in clean starched gingham dresses, who went flouncing by him on the street one Saturday afternoon.

“Oh,” returned one of the women, with the elaborate superiority of a member of the class of idle rich, “we’re just serenadin’ ’round.”

“Serenading,” as she used the word, meant a promenade about the town.

Perhaps the happiness of the negro, here, has to do with the lazy life of the river.  The succulent catfish is easily obtainable for food, and the wages of the roustabout—­or “rouster,” as he is called for short—­are good.

The rouster, in his red undershirt, with a bale hook hung in his belt, is a figure to fascinate the eye.  When he works—­which is to say, when he is out of funds—­he works hard.  He will swing a two-hundred-pound sack to his back and do fancy steps as he marches with it up the springy gangplank to the river steamer’s deck, uttering now and then a strange, barbaric snatch of song.  He has no home, no family, no responsibilities.  An ignorant deck hand can earn from forty to one hundred dollars