I attribute the greater comparative success on my plantations to my having abandoned the system of working a common field early in the season.[64] I now measure the yield of each family's corn-patch separately, with a view to pay them for it, if they have enough for their support in their private fields, or to regulate their allowance, if they need any, by the quantity they raise. We had a case of imprisonment here last week. I learned that old Nat's boy, Antony, who wanted to marry Phillis, had given her up and taken Mary Ann, July's daughter, without saying a word to me or any other white man. I called him up to me one afternoon when I was there and told him he must go to church and be married by the minister according to law. He flatly refused, with a good deal of impertinence, using some profane language learned in camp. I thereupon told him he must go home with me, showing him I had a pistol, which I put in my outside pocket. He came along, swearing all the way and muttering his determination not to comply. I gave him lodging in the dark hole under the stairs, with nothing to eat. Next morning old Nat came and expostulated with him, joined by old Ben and Uncle Sam, all of whom pitched into him and told him he was very foolish and ought to be proud of such a chance. He finally gave up and promised to go. So I let him off with an apology. Next Sunday he appeared and was married before a whole church full of people. The wedding took place between the regular church service and the funeral, allowing an hour of interval, however. Cato never went back to Rose as he promised. 'Siah tells me he is afraid of his father, old Toby, who has been in a state of chronic feud with Rose's father, old Alex, and does all in his power to make trouble. Cato has gone over to Pine Grove and begun to build a house. I daresay he will take Rose into it bye and bye, when it is done. I have been very busy lately weighing pease and cotton and measuring corn. The latter is not very pleasant, for I have to stay in the corn-house and keep tally from nine to three o'clock, and the weevils are more numerous than were the fleas the first week we came here to live. Mosquitoes are about gone, but we have sand-flies again. No fleas yet that I am aware of. FROM C. P. W.