WILLOUGHBY BAY EXAMINATION.

When we entered the school house at Willoughby Bay, which is capable of containing a thousand persons, a low murmur, like the notes of preparation, ran over the multitude.  One school came in after we arrived, marching in regular file, with their teacher, a negro man, at their head, and their standard bearer following; next, a sable girl with a box of Testaments on her head.  The whole number of children was three hundred and fifty.  The male division was first called out, and marched several times around the room, singing and keeping a regular step.  After several rounds, they came to a halt, filing off and forming into ranks four rows deep—­in quarter-circle shape.  The music still continuing, the girls sallied forth, went through the same evolutions, and finally formed in rows corresponding with those of the boys, so as to compose with the latter a semicircle.

The schools were successively examined in spelling, reading, writing, cyphering, &c., after the manner already detailed.  In most respects they showed equal proficiency with the children of Parham; and in reading the Testament, their accuracy was even greater.  In looking over the writing, several “incendiary” copies caught our eyes.  One was, “Masters, give unto your servants that which is just and equal.”  Another, “If I neglect the cause of my servant, what shall I do when I appear before my Master!” A few years ago, had children been permitted to write at all, one such copy as the above would have exploded the school, and perchance sent the teacher to jail for sedition.  But now, thanks to God! the Negro children of Antigua are taught liberty from their Bibles, from their song books, and from their copy books too; they read of liberty, they sing of it, and they write of it; they chant to liberty in their school rooms, and they resume the strains on their homeward way, till every rustling lime-grove, and waving cane-field, is alive with their notes, and every hillock and dell rings with “free” echoes.

The girls, in their turn, pressed around us with the liveliest eagerness to display their little pieces of needle-work.  Some had samplers marked with letters and devices in vari-colored silk.  Others showed specimens of stitching; while the little ones held up their rude attempts at hemming handkerchiefs, aprons, and so on.

During the exercises we spoke to several elderly women, who were present to witness the scene.  They were laborers on the estates, but having children in the school, they had put on their Sunday dresses, and “come to see.”  We spoke to one, of the privileges which the children were enjoying, since freedom.  Her eyes filled, and she exclaimed, “Yes, massa, we do tank de good Lord for bring de free—­never can be too tankful.”  She said she had seven children present, and it made her feel happy to know that they were learning to read.  Another woman said, when she heard the children reading so finely,