self-denial, they laughed at it; and one wicked wag even compared her, in allusion to her acerbity and her privation, to a crab, without the nippers. She persevered notwithstanding in her system; and to the constancy of a martyr added something of the wilfulness of a bigot :—indeed, it was hinted by patrons and patronesses of white charities, that European objects had not their fair share in her benevolence. She was pre-eminently the friend of the blacks. Howbeit, for all her sacrifices, not a lash was averted from their sable backs. She had raised discontent in the kitchen, she had disgusted her acquaintance, sickened her friends, and given her own dear little nephews the stomach-ache, without saving Quashy from one cut of the driver's whip, or diverting a single kick from the shins of Sambo. Her grocer complained loudly of being called a dealer in human gore, yet not one hogshead the less was imported from the Plantations. By an error common to all her class she mistook a negative for a positive principle; and persuaded herself that by not preserving damsons, she preserved the Niggers; that by not sweetening her own cup, she was dulcifying the lot of all her sable brethren in bondage. She persevered accordingly in setting her face against sugar instead of slavery; against the plant, instead of the planter; and had actually abstained for six months from the forbidden article, when a circumstance occurred that roused her sympathies into more active exertions. It pleased an American lady to import with her a black female servant, whom she rather abruptly dismissed, on her arrival in England. The case was considered by the Hampshire Telegraph of that day, as one of GREAT HARDSHIP; the paragraph went the round of the papers -and in due time attracted the notice of Miss Morbid. It was precisely addressed to her sensibilities, and there was a "Try Warren "tone about it, that proved irresistible. She read-and wrote, and in the course of one little week, her domestic establishment was maliciously but truly described as consisting of "two white Slaves and a black Companion.' The adopted protégée was, in reality, a strapping clumsy Negress, as ugly as sin, and with no other merit than that of being of the same color as the crow. She was artful, sullen, gluttonous, and, above all, so intolerably indolent, that if she had been literally "carved in ebony," as old Fuller says, she could scarcely have been of less service to her protectress. Her notion of Free Labor seemed to translate it into laziness, and taking liberties; and, as she seriously added to the work of her fellow-servants, without at all contributing to their comfort, they soon looked upon her as a complete nuisance. The house-maid dubbed her "6 a Divil,”—the cook roundly compared her to "a mischivus beast, as runs out on a herd o' black cattle ;"-and both concurred in the policy of laying all household sins upon the sooty shoulders-just as slatterns select a color that hides the dirt. It is certain that shortly after the instalment of the negress in the family, a moral disease broke out with considerable violence, and justly or not, the odium was attributed to the new comer. Its name was theft. First, there was a shilling short in some loose change-next, a missing half-crown from the mantel-piece-then there was a stir with a tea-spoon-anon, a piece of work about a thimble. Things went, nobody knew how -the "Divil" of course excepted. The Cook could, the Housemaid would, and Diana should, and ought to take an oath, declaratory of innocence, before the mayor; but as Diana did not volunteer an affidavit, like the others, there was no doubt of her guilt, in the kitchen. Miss Morbid, however, came to a very different conclusion. She thought that whites who could eat sugar, were capable of any atrocity, and had not forgotten the stand which had been. made by the "pale faces," in favor of the obnoxious article. The cook especially incurred suspicion; for she had been notorious aforetime for a lavish hand in sweetening, and was accordingly quite equal to the double turpitude of stealing and bearing false witness. In fact, the mistress had arrived at the determination of giving both her white hussies their month's warning, when unexpectedly the thief was taken, as the lawyers say, "in the manner," and with the goods upon the person. In a word, the ungrateful black was detected in the very act of levying what might be called her "Black Mail." The horror of Emilia, on discovering that the Moor had murdered her mistress, was scarcely greater than that of Miss Morbid! She hardly, she said, believed her own senses. You might have knocked her down with a feather! She did not know whether she stood on her head or her heels. She was rooted to the spot! and her hair, if it had been her own, would have stood upright upon her head! There was no doubt in the case. She saw the transfer of a portion of her own bank-stock, from her escritoire into the right-hand pocket of her protégée-she heard it chink as it dropped downwards,-she was petrified!dumb-founded !—thunder-bolted !—“annilliated." She was as white as a sheet, but she felt as if all the blacks in the world had just blown in her face. Her first impulse was to rush upon the robber, and insist on restitution-her second was to sit down and weep,—and her third was to talk. The opening, as usual, was a mere torrent of ejaculations intermixed with vituperation-but she gradually fell into a lecture with many heads. First, she described all she had done for the Blacks, and then, alas! all that the Blacks had done for her. Next she insisted on the enormity of the crime, and, anon, she enlarged on the nature of its punishment. It was here that she was most eloquent. She traced the course of human justice, from detection to conviction, and thence to execution, liberally throwing dissection into the bargain and then descending with Dante into the unmentionable regions, she painted its terrors and tortures with all the circumstantial fidelity that certain very Old Masters have displayed on the same subject. "And now, you black wretch," she concluded, having just given a finishing touch to a portrait of Satan himself; “and now, you black wretch, I insist on knowing what I was robbed for. Come, tell me what tempted you! I'm determined to hear it! I insist, I say, on knowing what was to be done with the wages of iniquity!" She insisted, however, in vain. The black wretch had seriously inclined her ear to the whole lecture, grinning and blubbering by turns. The Judge with his black cap, the Counsel and their wigs, the twelve men in a box, and Jack Ketch himselt -whom she associated with that pleasant West Indian personage, John Canoe-had amused, nay, tickled her fancy; the pressroom, the irons, the rope, and the Ordinary, whom she mistook for an overseer, had raised her curiosity, and excited her fears; but the spiritualities, without any reference to Obeah, had simply mystified and disgusted her, and she was now in a fit of the sulks. Her mistress, however, persisted in her question; and not the less pertinaciously, perhaps, from expecting a new peg whereon to hang a fresh lecture. She was determined to learn the destination of the stolen money; and by dint of insisting, cajoling, and, above all, threatening-for instance, with the whole Posse Comitatus-she finally carried her point. "Cuss him money! Here's a fuss!" exclaimed the culprit, quite worn out at last by the persecution. "Cuss him money! here's a fuss! What me 'teal him for? What me do wid him? What anybody 'teal him for? Why, for sure, to buy sugar!" I REMEMBER, I REMEMBER. I REMEMBER, I remember, I remember, I remember, The roses-red and white; I remember, I remember, Where I was used to swing; And thought the air must rush as fresh To swallows on the wing: My spirit flew in feathers then, That is so heavy now, And summer pools could hardly cool The fever on my brow! I remember, I remember, The fir trees dark and high; |