"I knows how to form 'em," he said with a broad smile of satisfied vanity. "I used to c'mand a comp'ny under Gineral Phelps. I was head boss of his cullud 'campment. He fus' give me the title of Major."
He took his post on the right of the line, honored the Doctor with a military salute, and commanded in a hollow roar, "'Tention!"
"My friends," said the Doctor, "we are all here to earn our living."
"That's so. Bress the Lawd! The good time am a comin'," from the not unintelligent audience.
"Hear me patiently and don't interrupt," continued the Doctor. "I see that you understand and appreciate your good fortune in being able at last to work for the wages of freedom."
"Yes, Mars'r," in a subdued hoarse whisper from Major Scott, who immediately apologized for his liberty by a particularly grand military salute.
"I want to impress upon you," said Ravenel, "that the true dignity of freedom does not consist in laziness. A lazy man is sure to be a poor man, and a poor man is never quite a free man. He is not free to buy what he would like, because he has no money. He is not free to respect himself, for a lazy man is not worthy even of his own respect. We must all work to get any thing or deserve any thing. In old times you used to work because you were afraid of the overseer." "Whip," he was about to say, but skipped the degrading word.
"Now you are to work from hope, and not from fear. The good time has come when our nation has resolved to declare that the laborer is worthy of his hire."
"Oh, the blessed Scripter!" shouted Madam Scott in a piercing pipe, whereupon her husband gave her a white-eyed glare of reproof for daring to speak when he was silent.
"Your future depends upon yourselves," the Doctor went on. "You can become useful and even influential citizens, if you will. But you must be industrious and honest, and faithful to your engagements. I want you to understand this perfectly. I will talk more to you about it some other time. Just now I wish chiefly to impress upon you your immediate duties while you are on this plantation. I shall expect you all to sleep in your quarters. I shall expect you to be up at daybreak, get your breakfasts as soon as possible, and be ready to go to work at once. You must not leave the plantation during the day without my permission. You will work ten hours a day during the working season. You will be orderly, honest, virtuous and respectable. In return I am to give you rations, clothing, quarters, fuel, medical attendance, and instruction for children. I am also to pay you as wages eight dollars a month for first-class hands, and six for second-class. Each of you will have his little plot of land. Finally, I will endeavor to see that you are all, old and young, taught to read."