"If pretended ailments, without apparent causes, or visible effects, will screen her from work, I shall get no work at all from her;--for a more lazy, deceitful and impudent huzzy is not to be found in the United States than she is." "I observe what you say of Betty Davis &ct," he wrote a little later, "but I never found so much difficulty as you seem to apprehend in distinguishing between _real_ and _feigned_ sickness;--or when a person is much _afflicted_ with pain .-- Nobody can be very sick without having a fever, nor will a fever or any other disorder continue long upon any one without reducing them .-- Pain also, if it be such as to yield entirely to its force, week after week, will appear by its effects; but my people (many of them) will lay up a month, at the end of which no visible change in their countenance, nor the loss of an oz of flesh, is discoverable; and their allowance of provision is going on as if nothing ailed them." He not only deemed his negroes lazy, but he had also a low opinion of their honesty.

Alexandria was full of low shopkeepers who would buy stolen goods from either blacks or whites, and Washington declared that not more than two or three of his slaves would refrain from filching anything upon which they could lay their hands.
[Illustration: Spinning House--Last Building to the Right] [Illustration: The Butler's House and Magnolia Set out by Washington the Year of his Death] He found that he dared not leave his wine unlocked, because the servants would steal two glasses to every one consumed by visitors and then allege that the visitors had drunk it all.
He even suspected the slaves of taking a toll from the clover and timothy seed given them to sow and adopted the practice of having the seed mixed with sand, as that rendered it unsalable and also had the advantage of getting the seed sown more evenly.
Corn houses and meat houses had to be kept locked, apples picked early, and sheep and pigs watched carefully or the slaves took full advantage of the opportunity.

Nor can we at this distant day blame them very much or wax so indignant as did their master over their thieveries.

They were held to involuntary servitude and if now and then they got the better of their owner and managed to enjoy a few stolen luxuries they merely did a little toward evening the score.

But it was poor training for future freedom.
The black picture which Washington draws of slavery--from the master's standpoint--is exceedingly interesting and significant.