"The black ball is in motion. Mrs DeSaussure's cook shook the dust off her feet and departed from her kitchen today, free, she said. The washerwoman packing to go.
Scipio Africanus, the colonel's body servant, is a soldierly looking black creature to delight the eyes of old Frederick William, who liked them giants. We asked him how the Yankees came to leave him.
'Oh, I told them Marster couldn't do without me nohow, and then I carried them some nice hams that they never could have found, they were hid so good.'
Eben* dressed himself in his best and went at a run to meet his Yankee deliverers, so he said. At the gate he met a squad coming in. He had adorned himself with his watch and a chain, like the cordage of a ship, with a handful of gaudy seals. He knew the Yankees came to rob white people, but he thought they came to save niggers.
'Hand over that watch!' Minus his fine watch and chain, Eben returned a sadder and wiser man. He was soon in his shirtsleeves, whistling at his knife board.
'Why? You here? Why did you come back so soon?'
'Well, I thought maybe better stay with ole Marster that give me the watch and not go with them that stole it.'
The watch was the pride of his life. The iron had entered his soul."
*Chesnut slave butler
