"I know the new ideas are prohibitive, and some other blank thing, but you're safe here from your constituents, and by gad, sir, I shan't force you to take it! It's MY custom, Hathaway--an old one--played out, perhaps, like all the others, but a custom nevertheless, and I'm only surprised that George, who knows it, should have forgotten it." "Fack is, Marse Harry," said George, with feverish apology, "it bin gone 'scaped my mind dis mo'nin' in de prerogation ob business, but I'm goin' now, shuah!" and he disappeared.
"A good boy, sir, but beginning to be contaminated.

Brought him here from Nashville over ten years ago.

Eight years ago they proved to him that he was no longer a slave, and made him d--d unhappy until I promised him it should make no difference to him and he could stay.

I had to send for his wife and child--of course, a dead loss of eighteen hundred dollars when they set foot in the State--but I'm blanked if he isn't just as miserable with them here, for he has to take two hours in the morning and three in the afternoon every day to be with 'em.

I tried to get him to take his family to the mines and make his fortune, like those fellows they call bankers and operators and stockbrokers nowadays; or to go to Oregon where they'll make him some kind of a mayor or sheriff--but he won't.