And, too, there were these poor wretches
accidentally shot down at his side; his feelings couldn't withstand
the ghostly appearance of their corpses as he was carried past them,
perhaps to be buried n the same forlorn grave, the very next day.
All these things reflected their results through the morbidity of
Mr. M'Fadden's mind; but his last observation, showing how slender
is the cord between life and death, proved what was uppermost in his
mind. "You'll allow I'm an honest man? I have great faith in your
opinion, Doctor! And if I have been rather go-ahead with my niggers,
my virtue in business matters can't be sprung," he mutters. The
physician endeavours to calm his anxiety, by telling him he is a
perfect model of goodness,--a just, honest, fearless, and
enterprising planter; and that these attributes of our better nature
constitute such a balance in the scale as will give any gentleman
slaveholder very large claims to that spiritual proficiency
necessary for the world to come.
Mr. M'Fadden acquiesces in the correctness of this remark, but
desires to inform the practitioner what a sad loss he has met with.
He is sure the gentleman will scarcely believe his word when he
tells him what it is. "I saw how ye felt downright affected when
that nigger o' mine prayed with so much that seemed like honesty and
christianity, last night," he says.
"Yes," interrupts the man of medicine, "he was a wonderful nigger
that. I never heard such natural eloquence nor such pathos; he is a
wonder among niggers, he is! Extraordinary fellow for one raised up
on a plantation.
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