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the matter with him ; indeed, when the other 

 negroes abused him for his laziness, and leaving 

 them to do his work for him, he told them plainly 

 that he did not mean to work, and that nobody 

 should make him. The only real illness which 

 brought him to the hospital, within my knowledge, 

 was the consequence of a beating received from 

 his own father, who had caught him in the act of 

 robbing his house by the help of a false key. In 

 the hospital he found his wife, Philippa, the mad 

 woman, with whom he instantly quarrelled, and 

 she cut his head open with a plate ; and as she 

 might have served one of the^ children in the same 

 way, we were obliged to confine her. Her hus- 

 band was thought to be the fittest person to guard 

 her ; and accordingly they were locked up together 

 in a separate room from the other invalids, till a 

 straight waistcoat could be made. The husband was 

 then restored to freedom, and desired to go to work, 

 which he declared to be impossible from illness ; yet 

 he disappeared the whole of the next day; and on his 

 return on the following morning, he had the impu- 

 dence to assert that he had never been out of the 

 hospital for an hour. For this runaway offence, and 

 for endeavouring to exasperate his wife's phrensy, 

 he was put into the bilboes for two days : on 

 the third he was released ; when he came to me 

 with tears in his eyes, implored me most earnestly 

 to forgive what had past, and promised to behave 

 better for the future, " to so good a massa." It 



