THE DEVOTION OF THOMAS NED. 181 



such odds and ends as the semi-savage negro delights 

 to conceal about his person. Trousers, also, in the 

 last stages of senility, through which the legs they 

 made a pretense of incasing, were distinctly visible 

 in numerous places, and which depended from an 

 old leather belt around the waist. He had no shoes, 

 but on his head wore a hat that it were better he had 

 left in the ash heap, whence, doubtless, it had been 

 abstracted. 



The gun he carried was a single-barrel, body and 

 soul — that is, stock and barrel — being held together by 

 strings. The cur that trotted after and looked upon 

 this tatterdemalion as master was a good specimen of 

 the genus that is always found attached to the black 

 man ; he had many good points, according to Thomas 

 Ned, but it was beyond my power to discover them. 



As soon as I had sufficiently recovered to assume 

 command in the cabin, I sent man and dog to the sea- 

 shore, where I had some old clothes in a chest, and, after 

 the man had divested himself of his rags and taken a 

 bath in the bay, re-enforced by a scrubbing on the 

 sands, I gave him an entirely new and clean suit of 

 linen and duck. He had previously buried the old 

 ones, but not without evident regrets, almost tearfully 

 expressed, and had subjected the dog to a cleansing 

 process ; so that the pair appeared, in the end, com- 

 pletely transformed. 



Neither seemed at first very grateful for my at- 

 tentions, but Thomas soon saw the wisdom of my 

 work, and, like Friday, " Mighty well was he pleas'd 

 to see himself almost as well cloth'd as his Master. 



