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eminently qualified to render him essential service; as, although his agricultural and commercial speculations were both extensive, he was himself perfectly illiterate, and obliged to hire a free man to attend him at stated times, and arrange his books. But I soon found, to my sorrow, that I had little reason for self-congratulation. 'Tis true, this ignorant and good-for-nothing fellow was glad to avail himself of my talents, and thereby save the expense he had before incurred; but he thought it too much to support me in a ration of provisions in return for my services, though I should have been satisfied therewith. His avarice was such, that he expected me to act in the double capacity of his clerk and labourer; and he accordingly measured out the prescribed portion of ground which he required me to break up with the hoe, well knowing I had not been accustomed to hard labour, and that I was in fact incapable of the task. My remonstrances produced the most unfeeling replies on his part, accompanied with threats of getting me flogged, and every other species of tyrannical persecution. This wretch, though now possessed of thousands, was a few years ago one of the poorest objects in the colony, and as defective in bodily as in mental endowments; nor was his present opulence so much the effect of laudable industry, as of a natural low cunning he possessed, which qualified him to take advantage of floods, tem-
