“Betsy,” another “plain seamstress and house-servant,” about sixteen years of age, also the daughter of a white man, had a fine intelligent eye, and her effort to restrain her feelings was evidently great.  The offers, however, not suiting, the auctioneer closed the exhibition, which had lasted an hour.

The next day being the Sabbath, I took it into my head to find out the Baptist Church.  They are all “churches” in America.  It was not far from the Presbyterian place of worship.  In passing the latter, I saw (as on the previous Sabbath) about forty or fifty boys in the square in front playing at cricket.  A number of grave-looking gentlemen were standing under the portico of the church, looking on with apparent complacency,—­not one attempting either to check these juvenile Sabbath-breakers, or to allure them to occupations more suitable to the day.

The Baptist Church is a small place, about 60 feet by 30, without galleries, except a little one for the singers.  When we arrived, a small Sabbath-school was being conducted in the body of the chapel.  About fifty children were present, of whom not one was coloured.  One of the teachers kindly led us to a pew.  It was the third or fourth from the door.  The school, which occupied the part next to the pulpit, was about to be dismissed.  The superintendent got into the “table-pew” to address the scholars.  It was the first time I had had an opportunity of hearing an address to children in America.  In the land of the Todds, the Abbotts, and the Gallaudets, I expected something very lively and interesting.  But grievous was my disappointment.  The address was dull and lifeless.  There was in it neither light nor heat.  When the superintendent had done, an elderly gentleman, shrewd and busy-looking, having in his hand a black walking-stick and on his neck a black stock, with shirt-collar turned over it like a white binding (the national fashion of the Americans), came up, and told the school that the proprietor of the splendid picture, “The Departure of the Israelites from Egypt,” had requested him to deliver a lecture upon it; that he had engaged to do so on Monday a-week; and that the scholars and teachers of that school would be admitted free.  I should like (said I to myself) to hear you:  a lecture on the emancipation of those poor slaves cannot fail to be interesting in the slave-holding city of New Orleans.  The school was now dismissed, and the scholars left to enjoy their full swing of lawless liberty.

The elderly gentleman descended from his elevation, and walked about the “church,” backwards and forwards, whispering a few words to one, and then to another, in a very bustling manner.  As I looked down the aisle, I saw on one side of it, near the pulpit end, a leg projecting about eighteen inches, in a pendent position, at an angle of about forty-five degrees.  This leg attracted my notice by its strange and solitary appearance.  It seemed as if it had got astray from its owner.  In America gentlemen’s