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come to work, and make such a disturbance, and 

 all because two old women and a little boy missed 

 coming into the field yesterday ! Down dropped 

 the fellow in a moment upon his marrow bones : 

 " Oh, me good massa," cried he (and out came 

 the truth, which I knew well enough before he 

 told me), <c me no come of my own head; me 

 ordered to come ; but me never tell massa lie more, 

 so me pray him forgib me !" But his obeying any 

 person on my own estate in preference to me, and 

 suffering himself to be converted into an instru- 

 ment of my annoyance, was not to be easily over- 

 looked ; so I turned him out of the house with a 

 flea in his ear as big as a camel; and the next 

 morning degraded him to the rank of a common 

 field negro. The trustee pleaded hard for his being 

 permitted to return to the waggons, from whence 

 he had been taken, and where he would be useful. 

 But I was obdurate. Then came his wife to beg 

 for him, and then his mother, and then his cousin, 

 and then his cousin's cousin : still I was firm ; till 

 on the day of my departure, the new chief governor 

 came to me in the name of the whole estate, and 

 bested me to allow John Lewis to return to the 

 command of the waggons, " for that all the negroes 

 said, that it would be too sad a thing for them to 

 see a man who had held the highest place among 

 them, degraded quite to be a common field negro." 

 There was something in this appeal which argued 

 so good a feeling, that I did not think it right to 



b b 3 



