a great deal to be done, ladies, and it don’t seem right that some backs should be broken with labor, while others have the spine complaint for want of exercise.  It didn’t agree with my independent New England habits to be waited upon so much.  A negro woman named Venus took care of my room.  The first night I slept at the plantation, it annoyed me to see her kneel down to take off my stockings and shoes.  I told her she might go, for I could undress myself.  She seemed surprised; and I think her conclusion was that I was no lady.  But all the negroes liked me.  They had got the idea, somehow, that Northern people were their friends, and were doing something to set them free.”

“Then they generally wanted their freedom, did they?” inquired Flora.

“To be sure they did,” rejoined Mrs. Bright.  “Did you ever hear of anybody that liked being a slave?”

Mrs. King asked whether Mr. Fitzgerald was a hard master.

“I don’t think he was,” said their hostess.  “I have known him to do very generous and kind things for his servants.  But early habits had made him indolent and selfish, and he left the overseer to do as he liked.  Besides, though he was a pleasant gentleman when sober, he was violent when he was intoxicated; and he had become much addicted to intemperance before I went there.  They said he had been a very handsome man; but he was red and bloated when I knew him.  He had a dissipated circle of acquaintances, who used to meet at his house in Savannah, and gamble with cards till late into the night; and the liquor they drank often made them very boisterous and quarrelsome.  Mrs. Fitzgerald never made any remark, in my presence, about these doings; but I am sure they troubled her, for I often heard her walking her chamber long after she had retired for the night.  Indeed, they made such an uproar, that it was difficult to sleep till they were gone.  Sometimes, after they had broken up, I heard them talking on the piazza; and their oaths and obscene jests were shocking to hear; yet if I met any of them the next day, they appeared like courtly gentlemen.  When they were intoxicated, niggers and Abolitionists seemed always to haunt their imaginations.  I remember one night in particular.  I judged by their conversation that they had been reading in a Northern newspaper some discussion about allowing slaveholders to partake of the sacrament.  Their talk was a strange tipsy jumble.  If Mr. Bright had heard it, he would give you a comical account of it.  As they went stumbling down the steps, some were singing and some were swearing.  I heard one of them bawl out, ’God damn their souls to all eternity, they’re going to exclude us from the communion-table.’  When I first told the story to Mr. Bright, I said d——­ their souls; but he said that was all a sham, for everybody knew what d——­ stood for, and it was just like showing an ass’s face to avoid speaking his name.  So I have spoken the word right out plain, just as I heard it.  It was shocking talk to hear, and you may think it very improper to repeat it, ladies; but I have told it to give you an idea of the state of things in the midst of which I found myself.”