Theodore Winthrop

“ Find an Englishman vital enough to be a Come-outer, and you have found a man worthy to be the peer of an American with Yankee education. Western scope, and California irrepressibility.
Winter chased us close. Often we woke at night, and found our bivouac sheeted with cold snow, — a cool sheet, but luckily outside our warm blankets. It was full December when the plains left us, fell back, and beached us upon the outer edge of civilization, at Independence, Missouri.
The muddy Missouri was running dregs. Steamboats were tired of skipping from sand-bar to sand-bar. ”

“ Ham’s a pop’lar nigger, a handy nigger, one er your raal ambitious sort. He ken cut hair, fry a beefsteak, and play on the fiddle like a minstril. He ken shoe a mule, drive a team, do a little j’iner work, and make stompers. ”

“ So sez I to him, ‘Ham, you’re a sprightly nigger, one of the raal ambitious sort, now aincher?’ He allowed he warnt nothin’ else. ‘Waal,’ sez I, ‘Ham, how’d you like to buy yerself, an’ be a free nigger, an’ hev a house of yer own, an’ a woman of yer own, all jess like white folks?’ ‘Lor,’ sez he, ‘Massa, I’d like it a heap.’ ‘Waal,’ sez I, ‘you jess scrabble round an’ raise me seven hundred dollars, an’ I’ll sell you to yerself, an’ cheap at that.’ So yer see he began to pay up, an’ I got a holt on him. ”