into the waggon and was carried home. The bulls were fractious and had to be led by one man, while another urged them forward with a cudgel.
Last night by the way a neighbour came into the house of Uncle Abram's master, and in the course of conversation about crops, said that on Sunday he went over to John Brown's to get him to come out and help him at his harvesting. He found four others there for the same purpose, but John said he didn't feel well, and he reckoned he couldn't work. He offered him a dollar and a half a day to cradle for him; but when he tried to persuade him, John spoke out plainly and said, "he'd be d—d if he was going to work anyhow;" so he said to the others, "Come, boys, we may as well go; you can't make a lazy man work when he's determined he won't." He supposed that remark made him mad, for on Thursday John came running across his cotton patch, where he was ploughing. He didn't speak a word to him, but cut along over to his neighbour's house, and told him that he had shot two deer, and wanted his hounds to catch 'em, promising to give him half the venison if he succeeded. He did catch one of them, and kept his promise.
This man Brown, they told me, had a large family, and lived in a little cabin on the mountain. He pretended to plant a corn patch, but he never worked it, and didn't make any corn. They reckoned he lived pretty much on what corn and hogs he could steal, and on game. The children were described as pitiably, "scrawny," half-starved little wretches. Last summer his wife had come to one of them, saying they had no corn, and she wanted to pick cotton to earn some. He had let her go in with the niggers and pick. She kept at it for two days, and took her pay in corn. Afterward he saw her little boy "toting" it to the mill to be ground—much too heavy a load for him.
