About this time the field-hands returned from their daily labour, and, having despatched their evening meal, they came, the women and children with them, under the trees before the door, with banjoes, fiddles, and clacking-bones (that is, a sort of castanets made of the ribs of an ox), and began to sing and dance, as was their custom always every fair evening; for my master greatly delighted, as he said, to see the poor devils enjoy themselves; in which the poor devils were ever ready to oblige him. They had no sooner begun the diversion, than I was seized with an unaccountable desire to join them, which I did, dancing with all my might, and singing and clapping my hands, the merriest and happiest of them all. And this sort of amusement, I may as well now inform the reader, we were in the habit of repeating so long as the mildness of the weather permitted. 5. CHAPTER V. IN WHICH THE AUTHOR FURTHER DESCRIBES HIS SITUATION, AND PHILOSOPHIZES ON THE STATE OF SLAVERY. Having thus shown myself to be perfectly cured of my broken neck, it followed that, as a slave, I was now compelled to go into the fields and labour. This I did, at first, very reluctantly; but by-and-by I discovered there was but little toil expected of me, or indeed of any other bondman; for the overseer was a good-natured man like his employer, and lazy like ourselves. I do not know how it may be with the slaves on other estates; but I must confess that, so far as mere labour went, there was less done by, and less looked for from, my master's hands, than I have ever known to be the case with the white labourers of New-Jersey. My master owned extensive tracts of land, from which, although now greatly empoverished and almost exhausted, he might have drawn a princely revenue, had he exacted of his slaves the degree of labour always demanded of able-bodied hirelings in a free state. But such was not the custom of Virginia, or such, at least, was not the custom of my master. He was of a happy, easy temper, neglectful of his interest, and though often--nay, I may say incessantly--grumbling at the flagrant laziness of all who called him master, and at the yearly depreciation of his lands, he was content enough if the gains of the year counterbalanced the expenses; and as but a slight degree of toil was required to effect this happy object, it was commonly rendered, and without repugnance, on the part of his slaves. His great consolation, and he was always pronouncing it to himself and to us, was, "that his hands were the greatest set of scoundrels in the world,"--which, if unutterable laziness be scoundrelism, was true. He was pretty generally beloved by them; which, I suppose, was because he was so good-natured; though many used to tell me they loved him because he was their "right-born master,"--that is, put over them by birth, and not by purchase; for he lived upon the land occupied by his fathers before him, and his slaves were the descendants of those who had served them.