wet of whiskey.  This is the allowance of a good man doing a good week’s work, and getting two pounds of bacon and a peck of corn as his compensation.  But, in grateful consideration, his good master allows him to work nights and Sundays to maintain himself.  In this way was “Bob’s bale of cotton” raised, which that anxious child of popular favor, the editor of the “Savannah Morning News,” so struggled to herald to the world as something magnificent on the part of the Southern slave-masters.  At best, it was but a speck.  If the many extra hours of toil that poor Bob had spent, and the hours of night that he had watched and nursed his plants, were taken into account, there would be a dark picture connected with “Bob’s bale of cotton,” which the editor forgot to disclose.

Every form of labor becomes so associated with servitude, that we may excuse the Southerner for those feelings which condemn those devoted to mechanical pursuits as beneath his caste and dignity.  Arrogance and idleness foster extravagance, while his pride induces him to keep up a style of life which his means are inadequate to support.  This induces him to subsist his slaves on the coarsest fare, and becoming hampered, embarrassed, and fretted in his fast-decaying circumstances, his slaves, one by one, suffer the penalty of his extravagance, and finally he himself is reduced to such a condition that he is unable to do justice to himself or his children any longer; his slaves are dragged from him, sold to the terrors of a distant sugar-plantation, and he turned out of doors a miserable man.

We see this result every day in South Carolina; we hear the comments in the broadways and public places, while the attorney and bailiff’s offices and notices tell the sad tale of poverty’s wasting struggle.

George, in passing from the wharf into the bay, met the Captain, who was shaping his course for the brig.  He immediately ran up to him, and shook his hands with an appearance of friendship.  “Captain, I’m right sorry to hear about your nigger.  I was not prepared for such a decision on the part of Mr. Grimshaw, but I’m determined to have him out,” said he.

“Well!” said the Captain, “I’m sorry to say, I find things very different from what I anticipated.  My steward is imprisoned, for nothing, except that he is a Portuguese, and everybody insists that he’s a nigger.  Everybody talks very fine, yet nobody can do any thing; and every thing is left to the will of one man.”

“Why, Captain, we’ve the best system in the world for doing business; you’d appreciate it after you understood it!  Just come with me, and let me introduce you to my father.  If he don’t put you right, I’ll stand convicted,” said little George.