NEGRO LIFR IN AMERIOA. 181

punished for it. As to honesty, the slave is kept in that dependant,
semi-childish state, that there is no making him realise the rights
of property, or feel that his master’s goods are not his own, if he
can get them. For my part, I don't see how they can be honest.
Such a fellow as Tom, here, is—is a moral miracle !”

«* And what becomes of their souls ?”’ said Miss. Ophelia.

«“ That isn’t my affair, as I know of,” said St. Clare ; “Tam
only dealing in facts of the present life. The fact is, that the
whole race are pretty generally understood to be turned over to
the devil, for our benefit, in this world, however it may turn out
in another!”

«“ This is perfectly horrible!” said Miss Ophelia; “ you ought
to be ashamed of yourselves !”” |

“JT don’t know as I am. We are in pretty good company, for
all that,” said St. Clare, ‘‘as people in the broad road generally
are. Look at the high and the low, all the world over, and it’s
the same story ; the lower class used up, body, soul, and spirit,
for the good of the upper. It is so in England ; it is so every-
where; and yet all Christendom stands aghast, with virtuous
indignation, because we do the thing in a little different way from
what they do it.” :

“ It isn’t so in Vermont.”

“Ah, well, in New England and in the free States, you have
the better of us, I grant. But there’s the bell; so, cousin, let
us for a while lay aside our sectional prejudices, and come out to
dinner.”

As Miss Ophelia was in the kitchen in the latter part of the
afternoon, some of the sable children called out, “ La, sakes!
thar’s Prue a coming, gruuting along like she allers dogs.”

A tall, bony, coloured woman now entered the kitchen, bearing
on her head a basket of rusks and hot rolls.

“Ho, Prue! you've come,” said Dinah.

Prue had a peculiar scowling expression of countenance, and a
sullen, grumbling voice. She set down her basket, squatted her-
self down, and resting her elbows on her knees said—

“© Lord! I wish’t I’s dead!”

“Why do you wish you were dead?” said Miss Ophelia.

“Td be out o’ my misery,” said the woman grufily, without
taking her eyes from the floor.

«“ What need you getting drunk, then, and cutting up, Prue?”
said a spruce quadroon chambermaid, dangling, as she spoke, a
pair of coral ear-drops.

The woman looked at her with a sour, surly glance.

“Maybe you'll come to it, one of these yer days. I'd be glad
to see you, | would; then you'll be glad of a drop, like me, to
forget your misery.”

tt Come, Prue,” said Dinah, “ let's look at your rusks. Here's
missis will pay for them.”