- From a dairy entry of some farmer in Acton, Massachusetts:
- It's May 3, 1775; it's cloudy and wet.
- The farmer is out in the fields when a Negro boy asks for work.
- (The boy, by the way, is obviously Octavian, but the farmer doesn't know that.)
- The farmer's trying to pull out stumps to make a new field, so he asks Octavian if he knows how.
- Octavian says yes, but he clearly doesn't know what he's doing, so the farmer asks him if he can chop wood.
- Octavian says yes again, but again he's obviously lying.
- The farmer figures out that Octavian can't do anything outdoorsy, so he tells him to run or he'll whip Octavian.
- Octavian just turns and walks slowly across the field.
- The farmer concludes that he and John pulled the rest of the stumps out; that the Jersey's baby is sick; and that, even though the rain is hard, it loosened the mud and let him pull the stumps out more easily.