% ^ 
1891 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
83 
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'Ji bgjirjtii. M/t &flH 
casses of beef or mutton to put in the ice-house. Flour, 
sugar and all groceries can be bought at wholesale rates, 
because there are always 40 or 50 persons to be fed. Five 
per cent of the cost of boarding 20 men is less than 100 per 
cent of the cost of boarding one man. There is always a 
loss in changing a man from one job to another. When 
there is work enough so that one man can be kept all the 
time in the horse barn, another in the cow barn, 
another with the pigs, and others at cultivating, hay¬ 
ing or digging, there is a gain of the time spent in 
changing and “ breaking in.” For the small farmer the 
lesson seems to be not to try too many things, but to work 
into a few specialties. 
The Hoyts have never gone head over heels into new 
things. Before they built a silo they looked the matter of 
ensilage all over, heard all they could about it and studied 
it. When at last they did build they knew what they 
were doing and made no mistake. This clear-headed cau¬ 
tion is characteristic of the men. They 
welcome new ideas and are always on 
the look-out for experiments; but they 
do not invest money in them till they 
have studied the matter with the 
utmost care. “ Know what you are 
about1” Is there any better advice for 
a young farmer anywhere ? 
SOME BERRIES. 
The gooseberry is rising in popular 
favor. The demand in market is in¬ 
creasing year by year. We shall prob¬ 
ably see in a few years a taste for it as 
great as that which is shown in Eng¬ 
land. Gooseberry pie and gooseberry 
pudding are worth eating. 
The native sorts in onr gardens do 
not differ very greatly in size or quality. 
Houghton and American may be class¬ 
ed together and are sold for each other. 
Smith’s is a trifle larger; but in plant¬ 
ing I should care very little which of them I had. In¬ 
dustry is probably a very fine berry in some localities; 
but with me it fails to bear decent crops. My friend 
Batchelor, of Utica, who knows a great deal about small 
fruits, also discards it for the same reason. [We have 
given the Industry a fair trial. The crop is always ren¬ 
dered useless by mildew.— Eds.] 
The English berries, such as Whitesmith and Crown 
Bob, have a reputation for mildewing in this country ; but 
any gooseberry will mildew if grown on low ground and 
left unpruned. My bushes stand on high, well drained 
soil, and never fail to return superb crops of clean fruit ; 
and there has been no mildew. The market demand is not 
so great as yet as to warrant very large planta¬ 
tions of the gooseberry; but In every market 
garden there should be a small plot. 
I have obtained a cross of native and foreign 
blood which gives me a fruit superb in color: 
whether it will prove a great improvement 
worth introducing will be told us by and by by 
Mr. T. S. Hubbard of Fredonia. I hope it may. 
There is a fine field for experiment in the way of 
improving the gooseberry. We can make a 
good domesticated fruit of the blueberry or 
whortleberry. It is not unlikely that the better 
way will be to sow seeds rather than rely on 
transplantations. 
The barberry I grow mostly for its exquisite 
beauty in flower and in fruit, but we occasion¬ 
ally pick enough for a few glasses of jelly. The 
English barberry is now domesticated in our 
woods, and is far finer than our native. 
Oneida County, N. Y. E. p. P. 
SLAVE FARMING IN SOUTH CAROLINA. 
How Slaves Really Worked and Lived. 
J. C. STRIBLING. 
[ Continued .1 
Masters generally rewarded their slaves for faithful¬ 
ness or good work by giving them holidays, good eatables, 
fine clothing and, sometimes, a little “ chink ” (pocket 
money) to rattle at the lazy fellows, and they punished them 
by whipping, mostly for yielding to their natural propen¬ 
sities for stealing and indolence. When the slave com¬ 
mitted a crime against the law, he always had an earnest 
defender In his master, who employed the ablest lawyer in 
his behalf, and often paid out more than the fellow was 
worth, to save his neck from the halter, or himself from a 
place upon the “ sale block ” to goto the highest bidder 
in order to foot the bill for fine or damages assessed by the 
law. In short, the intelligent slave-owner, who had an 
A MONUMENT TO YANKEE INDUSTRY. Fig. 38. 
eye to profit, could never afford to starve or work his slaves 
as if he wanted to kill out the race. It was to his interest 
to feed them well in order to have stout laborers, and to 
clothe and house them comfortably in order to increase 
their number; for in those days a planter was rated not so 
much by the value of his real estate as by the number of 
slaves he owned. 
Slaves were not raised for sale In any sense like stock, or 
sold off as surplus. In a general way, the slave owner who 
was attached to his slaves never had any “ surplus; ” 
when he had more than were needed to cultivate his plan¬ 
tation he either cleared the timber off more land if he had 
it, or.bought more, or perhaps hired out his slaves toothers. 
U 
'■1 v f ***'s ' 
NOTES ON VEGETABLES IN EASTERN 
MAINE. 
Last season I tried three varieties of onions : 
the Tqneriffe (or Bermuda) the Early Cracker 
and the Large Red Wethersfield. The first to 
mature was the Teneriffe, and next came the 
Early Cracker; but the Large Red Wethersfield 
was early enough and gave the best crop. Of 
celery I had the Giant Pascal and London Red. 
The latter carries off the palm with me. I note 
that the small plants, stunted from lack of fer¬ 
tility, those the gardener threw away, are to say 
the least, as crisp and tender as the large plants. 
I have tried some samples of another variety 
grown a few miles away, large, well-grown 
plants, and while they were five times as large 
as my smallest plants they were also five times 
as tough 'and stringy—much to my surprise. 
Of beans I'tried to raise Henderson’s Bush Lima, 
but the' season was evidently too short. Caseknife suc¬ 
ceeded, and so did Marblehead Champion Pole, London 
Horticultural, Marblehead Horticultural, etc. For qual¬ 
ity (dry) the first place among my bush beans belongs to a 
small, yellow bean that does not seem to be on the lists, 
and among pole beans it belongs to either the Caseknife or 
a large white bean without a name. Marblehead Cham¬ 
pion was the earliest and the most prolific of the poles. 
Of sweet corn I planted the Cory in pots and transplanted, 
and thereby got corn for the table on August 9, which is 
pretty early here. The Mexican, Gold Coin and Stowell’s 
were planted in the open ground, but not an ear did I get 
from any of them before the first frost, which came Sep¬ 
tember 25. I started many things besides corn in pots— 
cucumbers, melons, beans, etc—but the' corn took most 
kindly to this usage; of say 50 plants started in this way, 
not one failed to mature seed, though very much neglected, 
t Hancock County, Me, c. G, A. 
ding before the price offered for the human chattel reached 
its full value. The negro trader was the most dreaded 
devil of the slaves, and when any of them became unruly 
they were sold to this terror, who usually made a business 
of buying servile labor for the southwestern States, of 
which slaves raised in other parts of the South had an 
extreme horror. The owner of a refractory slave would 
often bring him or her submissively to terms by threaten¬ 
ing to sell the rebel to a trader. Slaves seldom ran away 
except from these negro traders, who sometimes kept fox 
or deer hounds to track them. Cuban or other blood 
hounds were seldom, if ever, used. The writer never even 
saw one until after emancipation, when they were brought 
here to guard and track convicts. 
In the lower country or black districts the grain cribs were 
commonly free to the slaves, and there were no locks on 
the doors. The negroes had all they wanted to eat, and 
there .was no one to whom they could sell anything. Meats 
were handed out at the rate of about 
2K pounds per week per hand, and 
were supplemented by the butter milk 
and vegetables, etc. from their gardens. 
Apropos of this matter, in a sermon 
preached at night by a slave and over¬ 
heard by his master, there was a cun¬ 
ning discrimination between stealing 
and taking. He said : “My bredren, it 
am writ in de Bible dat you mus’ not 
muzzle de ox dat tred out de grain ; 
r now de Lord mean dat ef yer tak tings 
r fer eat, dat am taken ; but ef yer tak 
tings fer ter trade ter de poor buckra 
on de ribber fer whisky, dat am 
teafen” (stealing). 
In the interior, away from the black 
districts, where there were plenty of 
whites, the lock and key had to be 
used all the time to prevent thei 
negroes from stealing and selling to 
some of the low class of whites. The 
classification of the different classes of white people by the 
slaves was quite amusing to strangers. A poor white man 
was called a “poor buckra,” and a slave dwner or rich 
man, a “rich buckra,” while a well-to-do man who owned 
no slaves was called a “high buckra,” and this distinction 
Is well observed by many of the old-time negroes to-day. 
Here is a quaint toast of the slave-time negroes, which 
they used to chant while enjoying a treat or dram-drinking 
at festivities like corn shuckings, harvest homes, negro 
weddings, etc. The master’s appearance on the porch of 
the plantation mansion or in the yard, with a large 
decanter in one hand and a drinking glass in the other, 
was a signal for the “driver” to prepare for a treat. At 
the top of his voice he would sing out: “ Here’s 
good whisky ; form In de row ; ” and all hands 
would repeat the chorus : “ Form in de row ; 
form in de row.” Then the leader would sing 
out again ; “ Massa has good brandy ; form in 
de row;” and the chorus “form in de row,” 
would be chanted by all again, until all were in 
line, when the master would begin to treat the 
driver who stood at the head of the line, and 
then all would begin to chant the following 
toast until all the line had been treated. 
toast.; 
De bif? bee suck de blossum, 
De little bee mnke de honey ; 
De nigger make de cotton, 
And de white folk take de money. 
Oh massa gimme brandy 
Kor ter make de nigger handy. 
The same verses were repeated over and over 
again till the toast was ended. Beyond question, 
many slaves fared better and were happier as 
slaves than they have been as free men. My 
own happiest days were spent on the farm 
among the slaves. After I had grown too large 
to be carried to the fields in the nurse’s arms, 
I used to ride there on the men’s backs, or, later, 
help to carry the negro babies to be nursed there 
by their mothers. Those indeed were happy, 
careless days, playing, running foot races} 
climbing trees, fishing, hunting, or bathing in 
the streams with the negro boys. And now 
when I meet one of these old-time negroes we 
are as glad to see each other as brothers, and I 
notice that the white children to-day would, as 
a rule, rather play with the negro children than 
with average white ones. 
NEW CANAAN BREED. /‘NO USE FOR HORNS! Fig. 39 
Often he would mortgage his slaves or home or both, or 
run almost any financial risk in order to keep his slaves, 
until perhaps the final crash came, and the law put the 
slaves “on the block” in order to satisfy the claims against 
their master or to settle an estate. Then occurred some of 
the most heart-rending scenes ever witnessed in slavery 
days. The laws to which they were due, however, were 
not passed to aid private greed to speculate in human 
beings; but were general laws designed to facilitate busi¬ 
ness transactions in the whole of each State in which 
slavery existed. Perhaps the owner, a newly-made widow, 
would follow the favorite slaves, who were in many cases 
nearly as dear to her as her own family, with streaming 
eyes to the block; while the slaves with trembling voices 
pleaded with the people to let “ Old Miss” or “Young 
Massa ” buy them and their families back. Such scenes 
often forced tears from strong men, and compelled even 
heartless speculators in human flesh apd souls to stop bid’ 
Some Experience with Apples. —I find that a 
number of fruit-growers are of the opinion that 
it makes a difference where the trees are started. 
For instance, it is asserted that the Baldwin, 
sent out from a northern nursery to our State, 
will bear fruit which will ripen in the fall; while 
if the tree comes from the South it will bear winter fruit. 
We have in our orchard root grafted trees from Rochester, 
N. Y., and in the next row are trees we have ourselves 
grown from seed. The seedlings were transplanted into 
nursery rows, and budded with the Baldwins the following 
August. Now, all the difference between the two kinds is 
that the home-grown are somewhat the larger. The fruit 
seldom stays on the trees later than September 20 and 
keeps not later than November 1; while trees of this variety 
taken to the north side of the higher ground three miles 
north of us will keep until Christmas. The Ben Davis keeps 
right well here, say, until February, wherever the trees 
come from. The Wealthy will not keep here later than 
September. Our stock came from Illinois. The Westfield 
Seek-no-further is entirely worthless with us; while on the 
higher trap rock formation back of us trees from the same 
lot bear fine apples. I. .r. blackwell. 
Mercer County, N. J. 
