call on two or three poor white men to work among his servants when he had no need of help.
Another neighbor he found more grateful. This man was very sick during the season when his field should have been ploughed. His wife and only servant were quite taken up with nursing him. One day they heard the voices of workers in their field, and, on looking out, recognized Colonel Dabney and his servants. He had heard of the trouble, and had ordered his men to go to this place with their mules and ploughs, and to put everything in order for the crop, not failing to take their dinners along. The man got well, and he and his wife and children were life-long friends to the family at Burleigh.
A young doctor moving to the neighborhood said in his hearing that he found it difficult to buy corn. Thomas made no comment, but the next morning the doctor saw a six-mule wagon at his gate. The driver, whom he recognized as a Burleigh negro, asked where the corn should be stowed away. He showed him his corn-crib, and a day or two after, meeting Thomas, asked what he owed for the corn. "Oh, nothing," was the answer; "I do not charge a neighbor for a wagon-load of corn." This incident is hardly worth mentioning were it not that little things make up a man's life and show the spirit.
His plantation was considered a model one, and was visited by planters anxious to learn his methods. He was asked how he made his negroes do good work. His answer was that a laboring man could do more work and better work in five and a half days than in six. He used to give the half of Saturdays to his negroes, unless there was a great press of work; but a system of rewards was more efficacious than any other method. He distributed prizes of money among his cotton-pickers every week during the season, which lasted four or five months. One dollar was the first prize, a Mexican coin valued at eighty-seven and a half cents the second, seventy-five cents the third, and so on, down to the smallest prize, a small Mexican coin called picayune, which was valued at six and a quarter cents.
