beauty, to be fingered. Stephen turned his face away,--to behold Mr.
Eliphalet Hopper looking calmly on.

"Wal, Mr. Brice, this is an interesting show now, ain't it? Something we
don't have. I generally stop here to take a look when I'm passing." And
he spat tobacco juice on the coping.

Stephen came to his senses.

"And you are from New England?" he said.

Mr. Hopper laughed.

"Tarnation!" said he, "you get used to it. When I came here, I was a sort
of an Abolitionist. But after you've lived here awhile you get to know
that niggers ain't fit for freedom."

Silence from Stephen.

"Likely gal, that beauty," Eliphalet continued unrepressed. "There's a
well-known New Orleans dealer named Jenkins after her. I callate she'll
go down river."

"I reckon you're right, Mistah," a man with a matted beard chimed in, and
added with a wink: "She'll find it pleasant enough--fer a while. Some of
those other niggers will go too, and they'd rather go to hell. They do
treat 'em nefarious down thah on the wholesale plantations. Household
niggers! there ain't none better off than them. But seven years in a
cotton swamp,--seven years it takes, that's all, Mistah."