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I have always described myself as of an easy,
contented disposition; and such I was born. But
misfortune produces sad changes in our tempers,
as it was soon my lot to experience. Before, however,
I describe the change that took place in mine,
it is fit I should let the reader understand to what
condition I was reduced by the perfidy of Jones,—
or, as I should rather say, by my own culpable
neglect of my affairs.

My whole landed possessions consisted of a farm
of forty acres, which I had, after the fashion of
some of my richer neighbours in other states, suffered
to fall into the most wretched condition imaginable.
My meadow-lands, being broken in upon
by the river, and neglected, were converted into
quagmires, reed-brakes, and cat-tail patches, the
only use of which was to shelter wild-fowl and
mire cattle. However, my live-stock was scanty
enough, and the only sufferers were my neighbours,
whose cows easily made their way through
my fences, and stuck fast in the mud at their pleasure.
My fields were overgrown here with mullein
and St. John's-wort, and there with sand-burs and

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poke-berries. My orchards were in an equally
miserable condition,—the trees being old, rotten,
or worm-eaten, half of them torn down by the
winds, and the remainder fit for nothing but fire-wood.
My barn was almost roofless; and as for
a stable, I had so little occasion for one, that my
old negro-man Jim, of whom I shall have more to
say hereafter, or his wife Dinah, or both together,
thinking they could do nothing better with it, helped
the winds to tear it to pieces, especially in the
winter, when it formed a very convenient wood-pile.
My dwelling-house was also suffering from
decay. It was originally a small frame building;
but my father had added to it one portion after
another, until it became spacious; and the large
porches in front and on the rear, gave it quite a
genteel, janty air. But this it could not long
keep; the sun and rain gradually drove the white
paint from the exterior, and the damps getting inside,
the fine paper-hangings, pied and spotted,
peeled from the walls. The window-frames rotted,
and the glasses left them one after another; and
one day in a storm one half the front porch tumbled
down, and the remainder, which I propped up
as well as I could, had a mighty mean and poverty-stricken
appearance. The same high wind carried
away one of my chimneys, which, falling on a corner
of the roof, crushed that into the garret, and
left one whole gable-end in ruins.

It must not be supposed that my property presented
altogether this wretched appearance at
the moment of my losses. It was ir truth bad

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enough then; but I am now describing it as it appeared
some few years after, when my miseries
were accumulated in the greatest number, and I
was just as poor as I could be.

In all this period of trouble and vexation I
had but one friend, if. I dare call him such;
though I should have been glad half the time
to be rid of him. This was my negro-man
Jim, or Jim Jumble, as he was called, of whom
I spoke before,—an old fellow that had been a
slave of my father, and was left to me in his
will. He was a crabbed, self-willed old fellow,
whom I could never manage, but who would
have all things his own way, in spite of me. As
I had some scruples of conscience about holding
a slave, and thought him of no value whatever,
but, on the contrary, a great trouble, I resolved to
set him free, and accordingly mentioned my design
to him; when, to my surprise, he burst into
a passion, swore he would not be free, and told me
flatly I was his master, and I should take care of
him: and the absurd old fool ended by declaring,
if I made him a free man he would have the law
of me, “he would, by ge-hosh!”

I never could well understand the cause of his
extreme aversion to being made free; but I suppose,
having got the upper hand of me, and being wise
enough to perceive the difference between living,
on the one hand, a lazy life, without any care
whatever, as my slave, and, on the other, labouring
hard to obtain a precarious subsistence as a free
man, he was determined to stick by me to the last,

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whether I would or not. Some little affection for
me, as I had grown up from a boy, as it were, under
his own eye, was perhaps at the bottom of his
resolution; but if there were, it was of a strange
quality, as he did nothing but scold and grumble at
me all day long. I remember, in particular, that,
when the match I spoke of before was broken off,
and he had heard of it, he came to me in a great
passion, and insolently asked “what I meant by
courting a wife, who would be a good mistress to
him, and not marrying her?” and, on my condescending
to explain the reasons of my change of
mind, he told me plumply, “I had no more sense
than a nigger; for women was women, and children
children; and he was tired living so long in a
house with none but me and Massa Jones for company.”

I suppose it was old Jim's despair of my ever
marrying, that put him upon taking a wife himself;
for one day, not long after I was reduced to
the forty-acre farm, he brought home a great ugly
free negro-woman, named Dinah, whom he installed
into the kitchen without the least ceremony,
and without so much as even informing me of his
intention. Having observed her two or three times,
and seeing her at last come bouncing into the dinner-room
to wait on me, I asked her who she was,
and what she wanted; to which she answered,
“she was Jim's wife, and Jim had sent her in to
take care of me.”

It was in this way the old rascal used me. It
was in vain to complain; he gave me to

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understand in his own language, “He knew what was
what, and there was no possuming an old nigger
like him; and if I had made him overseer, instead
of Massa Jones, it would have been all the better
for me.”

And, in truth, I believe it would; for Jim would
never have cheated me, except on a small scale;
and if he had done no work himself, it is very
certain he would have made everybody else work;
for he was a hard master when he had anybody
under him.

I may here observe, and I will do the old fellow
the justice to confess, that I found him exceedingly
useful during all my difficulties. What labour
was bestowed upon the farm, was bestowed
almost altogether by him and his wife Dinah. It
is true he did just what he liked, and without consulting
me,—planting and harvesting, and even
selling what he raised, as if he were the master
and owner of all things, and laying out what money
he obtained by the sales, just as his own wisdom
prompted; and finding I could do nothing
better, I even let him have his own way; and it
was perhaps to my advantage that I did.

But I grew poorer and poorer, notwithstanding:
and at that period, which I shall ever be inclined to
consider as the true beginning of my eventful life,
I was reduced almost to the point of despair; for
my necessities had compelled me to mortgage the
few miserable acres I had left, and I saw nothing
but utter ruin staring me in the face.

p016-035

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