Note 16 — LETTERS TO YOUNG PEOPLE
Reading edition
When Arick left us and went back to the German company, he had grown so fat and strong and intelligent that they deemed he was made for better things than for cotton-picking or plantation work, and handed him over to their surveyor, who needed a man to help him. I used often to meet him after this, tripping at his master’s heels with the theodolite, or scampering about with tapes and chains like a kitten with a spool of thread. He did not look then as though he were destined to die of a broken heart, though that was his end not so many months afterward. The plantation manager told me that Arick and a New Ireland boy went crazy with home-sickness, and died in the hospital together.—[L.O.]