reasons why I should like them, as I always did.

There were other reasons why I should be very fond of Tulp. He was a
queer, droll little darky as a boy, full of curious fancies and comical
sayings, and I never can remember a time when he would not, I veritably
believe, have laid down his life for me. We were always together, indoors
or out. He was exceedingly proud of his name, which was in a way a badge
of ancient descent--having been borne by a long line of slaves, his
ancestors, since that far-back time when the Dutch went crazy over
collecting tulip-bulbs.

His father had started in life with this name, too, but, passing into the
possession of an unromantic Yankee at Albany, had been re-christened
Eli--a name which he loathed yet perforce retained when Mr. Stewart bought
him. He was a drunken, larcenous old rascal, but as sweet-tempered as the
day is long, and many's the time I've heard him vow, with maudlin tears in
his eyes, that all his evil habits came upon him as the result of changing
his name. If he had continued to be Tulp, he argued, he would have had
some incentive to an honorable life; but what self-respecting nigger could
have so low-down a name as Eli, and be good for anything? All this
warranted my boy in being proud of his name, and, so to speak, living
up to it.

I have gossiped along without telling much of the long winter of 1757. In
truth, there is little to tell. I happen to remember that it was a season
of cruel hardship to many of our neighbors. But it was a happy time for
me. What mattered it that the snow was piled outside high above my head;
that food in the forest was so scarce that the wolves crept yelping close
to our stockade; that we had to eat cranberries to keep off the scurvy,
until I grew for all time to hate their very color; or that for five long