to his care. Thus you see, among these _inferior_ creatures, their own
masters yet look to find, surviving all their best efforts to destroy
them--good sense, honesty, self-denial, and all the qualities, mental and
moral, that make one man worthy to be trusted by another. From the
imperceptible, but inevitable effect of the sympathies and influences of
human creatures towards and over each other, Frank's intelligence has
become uncommonly developed by intimate communion in the discharge of his
duty with the former overseer, a very intelligent man, who has only just
left the estate, after managing it for nineteen years; the effect of this
intercourse, and of the trust and responsibility laid upon the man, are
that he is clear-headed, well judging, active, intelligent, extremely well
mannered, and, being respected, he respects himself. He is as ignorant as
the rest of the slaves; but he is always clean and tidy in his person,
with a courteousness of demeanour far removed from servility, and exhibits
a strong instance of the intolerable and wicked injustice of the system
under which he lives, having advanced thus far towards improvement, in
spite of all the bars it puts to progress; and here being arrested, not by
want of energy, want of sense, or any want of his own, but by being held
as another man's property, who can only thus hold him by forbidding him
further improvement. When I see that man, who keeps himself a good deal
aloof from the rest, in his leisure hours looking, with a countenance of
deep thought, as I did to-day, over the broad river, which is to him as a
prison wall, to the fields and forest beyond, not one inch or branch of
which his utmost industry can conquer as his own, or acquire and leave an
independent heritage to his children, I marvel what the thoughts of such a
man may be. I was in his house to-day, and the same superiority in
cleanliness, comfort, and propriety exhibited itself in his dwelling, as
in his own personal appearance, and that of his wife--a most active,
trustworthy, excellent woman, daughter of the oldest, and probably most
highly respected of all Mr. ----'s slaves. To the excellent conduct of