University of Virginia Library

22. SAMUEL HELE, ESQ.

I cannot omit Sam from my gallery of daubs. I should feel
a sense of incompleteness, grieving the conscience with a feeling
of duty undischarged and opportunities neglected, such
as Cave Burton would have felt had he risen from table with
an oyster-pie untouched before him.

Of all the members of the bar, Sam cultivated most the
faculty of directness. He could tolerate nothing less than
its absence in others. He knew nothing of circumlocution.
He had as soon been a tanner's horse, and walked all his life
pulled by a pole and a string, around a box, in a twenty-foot
ring, as to be mincing words, hinting and hesitating, and picking
out soft expressions. He liked the most vigorous words;
the working words of the language. He thought with remarkable
clearness; knew exactly what he was going to say;
meant exactly what he said; and said exactly what he meant.
A sea-captain with his cargo insured, would as soon have
made a “deviation” and forfeited the insurance, as Sam, especially
when in pursuit of a new idea, would have wandered
for a minute from his straight course. His sense was strong,

discriminating, and relevant. Swift was not more English in
his sturdy, peremptory handling of a subject, than Sam; nor
more given to varnish and mollifying. He tore the feathers
off a subject, as a wholesale cook at a restaurant does the plumage
off a fowl, when the crowd are clamorously bawling for
meat. Sam was well educated and well informed. But his
memory had never taken on more matter than his mind assimilated.
He had no use for any information that he could not
work into his thought. He had a great contempt for all prejudices
except his own, and was entirely uncramped by other
people's opinions, or notions, or whims, or fancies, or desires.
The faculty of veneration was not only wanting, but there
was a hole where there ought to have been a bump. Prestige
was a thing he didn't understand. Family he had no idea
of, except as a means of procreation, and he would have respected
a man as much or as little, if, improving on the modern
spirit of progress, he had been hatched out in a retort by a
chemical process, as if he had descended from the Plantagenets,
with all the quarterings right, and no bar sinister. He had
no respect for old things, and not much for old persons.
Established institutions he looked into as familiarly as into a
horse's mouth, and with about as much respect for their age.
He would, if he could, have wiped out the Chancery system, or
the whole body of the common law, “the perfection of human
reason,” as he would an ink blot dropped on the paper as he
was draughting a bill to abolish them. He had no tenderness
for the creeds or superstitions of others. A man, tender-toed
on the matter of favorite hobbies, had better not be
in Sam's neighborhood. If he cherished any mysteries and
tendernesses of belief that the strong sunlight of common sense
caused to blink in the eyes, Sam was no pleasant companion
to commune with; for Sam would drag them from the twilight
as he would an owl, into noonday, and laugh at the
figure they cut in the sunshine. A delicately-toned spiritualist
felt, when Sam was handling his brittle wares, as a fine
lady would feel, on seeing a blacksmith with smutty fingers
taking out of her box, her complexion, laces and finery.

Doctor Samuel Johnson objected to some one “that there
was no salt in his talk;” he couldn't have said that of Sam's
discourse. It not only contained salt, but salt-petre: for
probably, as many vigorous, brimstone expressions proceeded
from Sam's mouth, as from any body else's, the peculiar
patron of brimstone fireworks only excepted.

The faculty of the wonderful did not hold a large place
on Sam's cranium. He believed that every thing that was
marvellous was a lie, unless he told it himself; and sometimes
even then, he had his doubts. He only wondered on one subject;
and that was, that there always happened to be about
him such “a hello of a number of d—d fools;” and this wonder
was constant, deriving new strength every day; and he
wondered again at his inability to impress this comfortable
truth upon the parties whom he so frequently, in every form
and every where, and especially in their presence, sought to
make realize its force and wisdom, by every variety of illustration;
by all the eloquence of earnest conviction and solemn
asseveration.

If Sam had a sovereign contempt for any one more than
another, it was for Sir William Blackstone, whom he regarded
as “something between a sneak and a puke,” and for
whose superstitious veneration of the common law he felt
about the same sympathy that Gen. Jackson felt for Mr.
Madison's squeamishness on the subject of blood and carnage,
which the hero charged the statesman with not being
able “to look on with composure”—(he might as well have
said, pleasure).

Squire Sam was of a good family—a circumstance he a
good deal resisted, as some infringement on his privileges.
He would have preferred to have been born at large, without
any particular maternity or paternity; it would have been
less local and narrow, and more free and roomy, and cosmopolitan.

There had once been good living in the family. This is
evident from the fact that Sam had the gout; which proof,
indeed, except vague traditions, which Sam rejected as unworthy
of a sensible man's belief, is the only evidence of
this matter of domestic economy. Sam thought particularly
hard of this; he considered it a monstrous outrage, that the
only portion of the prosperous fortunes of his house which
fell to his share, should have been a disease which had long
survived the causes of it. As his teeth were set on edge,
he thought it only fair he should have had a few of the
grapes.

Sam's estimate of human nature was not extravagant.
He was not an optimist. He had not much notion of human

perfectibility. He was not apt to be carried away by his
feelings into any very overcharged appreciation either of
particular individuals or the general race. I never heard
him say what he thought would eventually become of most
of them; but it was very evident, from the tenor of his unstinted
talk, what he thought ought to become of them, if
transmundane affairs were regulated by principles of human
justice.

The particular community in which the Squire had set up
his shingle was not, even in the eyes of a more partial judgment
than he was in the habit of exercising upon men, ever
supposed to be colonized by the descendants of the good
Samaritan; and if they continued perverse, and persevered
in iniquity, it was not Sam's fault—he did his duty by
them. He cursed them black and blue, by night and by
day. He spared not. In these divertisements he exercised
his faculties of description, prophecy and invective, largely.
The humbugs suffered. Sam vastated them, as Swedenborg
says they do with them in the other world, until he left little
but a dark, unsavory void, in souls, supposed by their owners
to be stored up, like a warehouse, with rich bales of heavenly
merchandise. He pulled the dominos from their faces, and
pelted the hollow masks over their heads lustily. These
pursuits, laudable as they may be, are not, in the present
constitution of village society, winning ways; and therefore
I cannot truly say that Sam's popularity was universal; nor
did it make up by intensity in particular directions, what it
lacked of diffusion. Indeed, I may go so far as to say, that
it was remarkable neither for surface nor depth.

It is a profound truth, that the wounds of vanity are
galling to a resentful temper, and that few people feel much
obliged to a man who, purely from a love of truth, convinces
the public that they are fools or knaves; or who excites a
doubt in themselves touching the right solution of this problem
of mind and morals. Hence I may be allowed to doubt
whether Sam's industry and zeal in these exercises of his
talents—whatever effect they may have had on the community—essentially
advanced this gentleman's personal or pecuniary
fortunes. However, I am inclined to think that
this result, so far from grieving, rather pleased the Squire.
Having formed his own estimate of himself, he preferred
that that estimate should stand, and not be shaken by a coincidence
of opinion on the part of those whose judgments
in favor of a thing he considered was pretty good prima
facie evidence against it.

Sam's disposition to animadvert upon the community
about him, found considerable aggravation in a state of ill
health; inflaming his gout, and putting the acerbities and
horrors of indigestion to the long account of other provocatives,
of a less physical kind, to these displays. For a
while, Sam dealt in individual instances; but this soon
grew too tame and insipid for his growing appetite; for
invective is like brandy—the longer it is indulged in, the
larger and stronger must be the dose. Sam began to take
them wholesale; and he poured volley after volley into the
devoted village, until you would have thought it in a state
of siege.

There had, a few days before, been a new importation
from Yankeedom—not from its factory of calicoes, but from
its factory of school-teachers. The article had been sent to
order, from one of the interior villages of Connecticut. The
Southern propensity of getting every thing from abroad, had
extended to school-mistresses,—though the country had any
number of excellent and qualified girls wishing such employment
at home,—as if, as in the case of wines, the process of
importing added to the value. It was soon discovered that
this article was a bad investment, and would not suit the
market. Miss Charity Woodey was almost too old a plant
to be safely transplanted. What she had been in her youth
could not be exactly known; but if she ever had any charms,
their day had long gone by. I do not mean to flatter her
when I say I think she was the ugliest woman I ever saw—
and I have been in places where saying that would be
saying a good deal. Her style of homeliness was peculiar
only in this—that it embraced all other styles. It is a
wonderful combination which makes a beautiful woman;
but it was almost a miracle, by which every thing that gives
or gilds beauty was withheld from her, and every thing that
makes or aggravates deformity was given with lavish generosity.
We suppose it to be a hard struggle when female
vanity can say, hope, or think nothing in favor of its owner's
personal appearance; but Miss Charity had got to this point:
indeed, the power of human infatuation on this subject—for
even it is not omnipotent—could not help her in this matter.
She did not try to conceal it, but let the matter pass,

as if it were a thing not worth the trouble of thinking
about.

Miss Charity was one of those “strong-minded women
of New England,” who exchange all the tenderness of the
feminine for an impotent attempt to attain the efficiency of
the masculine nature; one of that fussy, obtrusive, meddling
class, who, in trying to double-sex themselves, unsex themselves,
losing all that is lovable in woman, and getting most
of what is odious in man.

She was a bundle of prejudices—stiff, literal, positive,
inquisitive, inquisitorial, and biliously pious. Dooty, as she
called it, was a great word with her. Conscience was another.
These were engaged in the police business of life,
rather than the heart and the affections. Indeed, she
considered the affections as weaknesses, and the morals a
sort of drill exercise of minor duties, and observances,
and cant phrases. She was as blue as an indigo bag.
The starch, strait-laced community she came from, she
thought the very tip of the ton; and the little coterie of
masculine women and female men—with its senate of sewing
societies, cent societies, and general congress of missionary
and tract societies—the parliaments that rule the world.
Lower Frothingham, and Deacon Windy, and old Parson
Beachman, and all the young Beachmans, constituted, in her
eyes, a sort of Puritanic See, before which she thought
Rome was in a state of continual fear and flutter.

She had come out as a missionary of light to the children
of the South, who dwell in the darkness of Heathenesse.

It was not long—only two days—before she began to
set every thing to rights. The whole academy was astir
with her activity. The little girls, who had been petted by
their fathers and mothers like doll-babies, were overhauled
like so much damaged goods by her busy fingers, and were
put into the strait-jacket of her narrow and precise system
of manners and morals, in a way the pretty darlings had
never dreamed of before. Her way was the Median and
Persian law that never changed, and to which every thing
must bend. Every thing was wrong. Every thing must
be put right. Her hands, eyes, and tongue were never idle
for a moment, and in her microscopic sense of dooty and
conscience, the little peccadilloes of the school swelled to the
dimensions of great crimes and misdemeanors.

It was soon apparent that she would have to leave, or the
school be broken up. Like that great reformer Triptolemus
Yellowby, she was not scant in delivering her enlightened
sentiments upon the subject of matters and things about
her, and on the subject of slavery in particular; and her
sentiments on this subject were those of the enlightened
coterie from which she came.

The very consideration with which, in the unbounded
hospitality and courtesy to woman in the South-West, she was
treated, only served to inflame her self-conceit, and to confirm
her in her sense of what her dooty called on her to do,
for the benefit of the natives; especially to reforming things
to the standard of New England insular habitudes.

A small party was given one evening, and she was invited.

She came. There were some fifteen or twenty persons
of both sexes there; among them our friend Sam, and
a few of the young men of the place. The shocking fact must
be related, that, on a sideboard in the back parlor was set
out something cold, besides solid refreshments, to which the
males who did not belong to the “Sons” paid their respects.
A little knot of these were laughing and talking around
Sam, who, as usual, was exerting himself for the entertainment
of the auditors, and, this time, in good humor. Some
remarks were made touching Miss Charity, for whose solitary
state—she was sitting up in the corner by herself, stiff
as steelyards—some commiseration was expressed; and it
was proposed that Sam should entertain her for the evening.
And it was suggested to Sam that he should try his best to
get her off, by giving her such a description of the country
as would have that effect. “Now,” said one of them, “Sam,
you've been snarling at every thing about you so long, suppose
you just try your best this time, and let off all your
surplus bile at once, and give us some peace. Just go up
to her, and let her have it strong. Don't spare brush or
blacking, but paint the whole community so black, that the
Devil himself might sit for the picture.” Sam took a glass,
and tossing it off, wiped his mouth, after a slight sigh of
satisfaction, and promised, with pious fervor, that, “by the
blessing of Heaven, he would do his best.”

One of the company went to Miss Charity, and, after
speaking in the highest terms of Sam, as a New England
man, and as one of the most intellectual, and reliable, and

frank men in the country, and one, moreover, who had conceived
a lively regard for her, asked leave to introduce him;
which having been graciously given, Sam (having first refreshed
himself with another potation) was in due form
introduced.

Miss Woodey, naturally desirous of conciliating Squire
Hele, opened the conversation with that gentleman, after
the customary formalities, by saying something complimentary
about the village. “And you say, madam,” replied
Sam, “that you have been incarcerated in this village for
two weeks; and how, madam, have you endured it? Ah,
madam, I am glad, on some accounts, to see you here. You
came to reform: it was well. Such examples of female heroism
are the poetry of human life. They are worth the martyrdom
of producing them. I read an affecting account the
other day of a similar kind—a mother going to Wetumpka,
and becoming the immate of a penitentiary for the melancholy
satisfaction of waiting upon a convict son.”

Miss Woodey.—“Why, Mr. Hele, how you talk! You
are surely jesting.”

Sam.—“Madam, there are some subjects too awfully serious
for jest. A man had as well jest over the corruptions
and fate of Sodom and Gomorrah—though, I confess, the
existence of this place is calculated to excite a great deal of
doubt of the destruction of those cities, and has, no doubt,
placed a powerful weapon in the hands of infidelity throughout
the immense region where the infamy of the place is
known.”

Miss W.—“Why, Mr. Hele, I have heard a very different
account of the place. Indeed, only the other evening, I
heard at a party several of the ladies say they never knew
any village so free from gossip and scandal.”

Sam.—“And so it is, madam. Men and women are free
of that vice. I wish it were otherwise. It would be a sign
of improvement,—as a man with fever when boils burst out
on him,—an encouraging sign. Madam, the reason why
there is no scandal here is, because there is not character
enough to support it. Reputation is not appreciated. A
man without character is as well off as a man with it. In
the dark all are alike. You can't hurt a man here by saying
any thing of him; for, say what you will, it is less than
the truth, and less than he could afford to publish at the
court-house door, and be applauded for it by the crowd.
Besides, madam, every body is so busy with his own villany,
that no one has time to publish his neighbor's.”

Miss W.—“Really, Mr. Hele, you give a poor account
of your neighbors. Are there no honest men among
them?”

Sam.—“Why,—y-e-s,—a few. The lawyers generally
acknowledge, and, as far as circumstances allow, practise, in
their private characters, the plainer rules of morals; but,
really, they are so occupied in trying to carry out the villany
of others, they deserve no credit for it; for they have no
time to do any thing on private account. There is also one
preacher, who, I believe, when not in liquor, recognizes a
few of the rudiments of moral obligation. Indeed, some

think he is not blamable for getting drunk, as he does it
only in deference to the public sentiment. I express no
opinion myself, for I think any man who has resided for ten
years in these suburbs of hell, ought modestly to decline the
expression of any opinion on any point of ethies for ever afterwards.

Miss W.—“But, Mr. Hele, if all this villany were going
on, there would be some open evidence of it. I have not
heard of a case of stealing since I've been here.”

Sam.—“No, madam; and you wouldn't, unless a
stranger came to town with something worth stealing; and
perhaps not then; for it is so common a thing that it hardly
excites remark. The natives never steal from each other—I
grant them that. The reason is plain. There are certain
acquisitions which, with a certain profession, are sacred.
`Honor among,' &c.—you know the proverb. Besides, the
theif would be sure to be caught: `Set a'—member of a
certain class—you know that proverb, too. Moreover, all
they have got they got, directly or indirectly, in that way—
if getting a thing by purchase without equivalent, or taking
it without leave is stealing, as any where else out of Christendom,
except this debatable land between the lower regions
and the outskirts of civilization, it is held to be. And to
steal from one another would be repudiating the title by
which every man holds property, and thus letting the common
enemy, the true owner, in, whom all are interested in keeping
out. Madam, if New-York, Mobile, and New Orleans were
to get their own, they might inclose the whole town, and

label the walls “the lost and stolen office.” When a Tennesseean
comes to this place with a load of bacon, they consider
him a prize, and divide out what he has as so much
prize money. They talk of a Kentucky hog-drover first
coming in in the fall, as an epicure speaks of the first shad
of the season.”

Miss W.—“The population seems to be intelligent
and—”

Sam (with Johnsonian oracularity).—“Seems—true; but
they are not. Whether the population first took to rascality,
and that degraded their intellects, or whether they were
fools, and took to it for want of sense, is a problem which I
should like to be able to solve, if I could only find some one
old enough to have known them when they first took to
stealing, or when they first began playing the fool; but that
time is beyond the oldest memory. I can better endure ten
rascals than one fool; but I am forced to endure both in
one. I see, in a recent work, a learned writer traces the
genealogy of man to the monkey tribe. I believe that this
is true of this population; for the characteristic marks of a
low, apish cunning and stealing, betray the paternity: but so
low are they in all better qualities, that, if their respectable
old ancestor the rib-nosed baboon, should be called to see
them, he would exclaim, with uplifted paws, `Alas, how
degenerate is my breed!' For they have left off all the
good instincts of the beast, and improved only on his
vices.”

Miss W.—“I have heard something of violent crimes,

murders, and so forth, in the South-West, but I have never
heard this particular community worse spoken of—”

Sam.—“Madam, I acquit them of all crimes which require
any boldness in the perpetration. As to assassination,
it occurs only occasionally,—when a countryman is found
drunk, or something of the sort; and even assaults and batteries
are not common. These occur only in the family circle;
such as a boy sometimes whipping his father when the
old man is intoxicated, or a man whipping his wife when
she is infirm of health: except these instances, I cannot say,
with truth, that any charge of this kind can be substantiated.
As to negroes—”

Miss W.—“Do tell me, Mr. Hele—how do they treat
them? Is it as bad as they say? Do—do—they,—really,
now—”

Hele.—“Miss W., this is a very delicate subject; and
what I tell you must be regarded as entirely confidential.
Upon this subject there is a secrecy—a chilling mystery of
silence—cast, as over the horrors and dungeons of the inquisition.
The way negroes are treated in this country
would chill the soul of a New Holland cannibal. Why,
madam, it was but the other day a case occurred over the
river, on Col. Luke Gyves's plantation. Gyves had just
bought a drove of negroes, and was marking them in his
pen,—a slit in one ear and an underbit in the other was
Luke's mark,—and a large mulatto fellow was standing at
the bull-ring, where the overseer was just putting the number

on his back with the branding-iron, when the nigger dog,
seeing his struggles, caught him by the leg, and the negro,
mad with the pain,—I don't think he did it intentionally,—
seized the branding-irons, and put out the dog's—a favorite
Cuba bloodhound—left eye. They took the negro down to
the rack in the plantation dungeon-house, and, sending for
the neighbors to come into the entertainment, made a Christmas
frolic of the matter. They rammed a powder-horn
down his throat, and lighting a slow match, went off to wait
the result. When gone, Col. Gyves bet Gen. Sam Potter
one hundred and fifty dollars that the blast would blow the
top of the negro's head off; which it did. Gen. Sam refused
to pay, and the case was brought into the Circuit Court.
Our judge, who had read a good deal more of Hoyle than
Coke, decided that the bet could not be recovered, because
Luke bet on a certainty; but fined Sam a treat for the crowd
for making such a foolish wager, and adjourned court over
to the grocery to enjoy it.”

Miss W.—“Why, Mr. Hele, it is a wonder to me that
the fate of Sodom does not fall upon the country.”

Sam.—“Why, madam, probably it would, if a single
righteous man could be found to serve the notice. However,
many think that its irredeemable wickedness has induced
Heaven to withdraw the country from its jurisdiction, and
remit it to its natural, and, at last, reversionary proprietors,
the powers of hell. It subserves, probably, a useful end, to
stand as a vivid illustration of the doctrine of total depravity.

Miss W.—“But, Mr. Hele,—do tell me,—do they now
part the young children from their mothers—poor things?”

Sam.—“Why, no,—candidly,—they do not very much,
now. The women are so sickly, from overwork and scant
feeding and clothing, that the child is worth little for
the vague chance of living. But when cotton was fifteen
cents a pound, and it was cheaper to take away the child
than to take up the mother's time in attending to it, they
used to send them to town, of a Sunday, in big hamper
baskets, for sale, by the dozen. The boy I have got in my
office I got in that way—but he is the survivor of six, the
rest dying in the process of raising. There was a great
feud between the planters on this side of Sanotchie, and
those on the other side, growing out of the treatment of
negro children. Those who sold them off charged the other
siders with inhumanity, in drowning theirs, like blind puppies,
in the creek; which was resented a good deal at the
time, and the accusers denounced as abolitionists. I did hear
of one of them, Judge Duck Swinger, feeding his nigger
dogs on the young varmints, as he called them; but I don't
believe the story, it having no better foundation than current
report, public belief, and general assertion.”

Miss W. (sighing).—“Oh, Mr. Hele! are they not afraid
the negroes will rise on them?”

Sam.—“Why, y-e-s, they do occasionally, and murder a
few families,—especially in the thick settlements,—but less
than they did before the patrol got up a subscription among
the planters to contribute a negro or two apiece, every month

or so, to be publicly hung, or burned, for the sake of example.
And, to illustrate the character of the population, let me
just tell you how Capt. Sam Hanson did at the last hanging.
Instead of throwing in one of his own negroes, as an
honest ruffian would have done, he threw in yellow Tom, a
free negro; another threw in an estate negro, and reported
him dead in the inventory; while Squire Bill Measly
painted an Indian black and threw him in, and hung him for
one of his Pocahontas negroes, as he called some of his half-breed
stock.”

Miss W.—“Mr. Hele! what is to become of the rising
generation—the poor children—I do feel so much for them
—with such examples?”

Sam.—“Madam, they are past praying for—there is one
consolation. Let what will become of them, they will get less
than their deserts. Why, madam, such precocious villany
as theirs the world has never seen before: they make their
own fathers ashamed of even their attainments and proficiency
in mendacity; they had good teaching, though. Why,
Miss Woodey, a father here never thinks well of a child
until the boy cheats him at cards: then he pats him on the
head, and says, `Well done, Tommy, here's a V.; go, buck
it off on a horse-race next Sunday, and we'll go snooks—
and, come, settle fair, and no cheating around the board.'
The children here at twelve years have progressed in villany
beyond the point at which men get, in other countries,
after a life of industrious rascality. They spent their rainy
Sundays, last fall, in making a catechism of oaths and profanity

for the Indians, whose dialect was wanting in those
accomplishments of Anglo-Saxon literature. There is not
a scoundrel among them that is not ripe for the gallows at
fourteen. At five years of age, they follow their fathers
around to the dram-shops, and get drunk on the heel-taps.”

Miss W.—“The persons about here don't look as if they
were drunk.”

Sam.—“Why, madam, it is refreshing to hear you talk
in that way. No, they are not drunk. I wish they were.
It would be an astonishing improvement, if dissipation would
only recede to that point at which men get drunk. But
they have passed that point, long ago. I should as soon
expect to see a demijohn stagger as one of them. Besides,
the liquor is all watered, and it would require more than a
man could hold to make him drunk: but the grocery keeper
defends himself on the ground, that it is only two parts
water, and he never gets paid for more than a third he sells.
But I never speak of these small things; for, in such a godless
generation, venial crimes stand in the light of flaming
virtues. Indeed, we always feel relieved when we see one
of them dead drunk, for then we feel assured he is not
stealing.”

Miss W.—“But, Mr. Hele, is there personal danger to
be apprehended—by a woman?—now—for instance—expressing
herself freely?”

Sam.—“No, madam, not if she carries her pistols, as
they generally do now, when they go out. They are usually
insulted, and sometimes mobbed. They mobbed a Yankee

school-mistress here, some time ago, for saying something
against slavery; but I believe they only tarred and feathered
her, and rode her on a rail for a few squares. Indeed, I
heard some of the boys at the grocery, the other night, talk
of trying the same experiment on another; but who it was,
I did not hear them say.”

Here Sam made his bow and departed, and, over a plate
of oysters and a glass of hot stuff, reported progress to the
meeting whose committee he was, but declined leave to sit
again.

The next morning's mail-stage contained two trunks and
four bandboxes, and a Yankee school-mistress, ticketed on
the Northern line; and, in the hurry of departure, a letter,
addressed to Mrs. Harriet S—, was found, containing
some interesting memoranda and statistics on the subject of
slavery and its practical workings, which I should never
thought of again had I not seen something like them in a
very popular fiction, or rather book of fictions, in which the
slaveholders are handled with something less than feminine
delicacy and something more than masculine unfairness.

[Sam takes the credit of sending Miss Charity off, but
Dr. B., the principal, negatives this: he says he had to give
her three hundred dollars and pay her expenses back to get
rid of her; and that she received it, saying she intended to
return home and live at ease, the balance of her life, on the
interest of the money.]