'I had become acquainted with Luke Meminger, the principal negro-dealer at Lexington, who boarded at McGowan's Hotel, where I was then stopping, and he introduced me to a Mississippi planter' who was there buying a few hands for his plantation back of Grand Gulf. Talbot (that was the planter's name) seemed to take a fancy to me, and finally proposed to me to go with him to Mississippi and serve as assistant overseer. He offered me a salary of eight hundred dollars a year; said I should have a horse to ride over the plantation, a servant to wait on me, and an easy time of it generally. I accepted the offer, and accompanied him down the river. We took down fifteen niggars whom he had purchased in Kentucky, mostly at Lexington. I was there two years, and left heartily sick of it.' 'Well, that is an episode in your history, Tom,' I said, 'that I could never have imagined. But now you must tell me something about plantation life. I have heard and read a great deal about it, but never had it from the mouth of an old friend on whose word I could rely, and who possessed the advantage of having been an overseer himself.' 'Oh! there is very little to tell,' said Tom. 'I had to set the niggars at work and see that they performed their tasks; that was all.' 'Well, what crops did you cultivate?' 'Cotton.' 'How many hands did you work?' 'About seventy-five. There were some hundred and fifty on the plantation, altogether, big and little. 'What did the women do?' 'Women?' said Tom, with a slight note of interrogation. 'We didn't know any thing about women: they were all _hands_. When I was driving stock to New-York, I treated oxen and cows all alike; and on our plantation all the able-bodied hands worked together in the field, and no difference was made between them. There were old, decrepit wenches, unable to work, who took care of the children during the day. When the mothers came from the field at night they suckled their picaninies--for nearly all the women have babies. They breed like rabbits,' added Tom, 'in postscript.' 'But what did _you_ know about raising cotton?' I asked. 'Nothing, of course,' he replied, 'you must remember that I was second overseer. The head overseer took the chief management of affairs. But when I had been there about three months, Blake died--that was my chief's name--then the whole charge of the plantation then devolved on me. Talbot was North, spending the summer. I wrote to him at Saratoga, informing of the death of Blake, and requesting him to get another head-overseer. But I got no reply, and I supposed he never received the letter. When he came back in the fall, I found that he had, though; but he said he supposed things would go on well enough. And so they did. The supplies were all on hand, and there was nothing to do but to work the place, raise the crop, and gather it.'