Soon after supper, Miss E., one of Mr. C.’s daughters, retired for the purpose of teaching a class of colored children which came to her on Wednesday and Saturday nights.  A sister of Miss E. has a class on the same days at noon.

During the evening we requested the favor of seeing Miss E.’s school.  We were conducted by a flight of stairs into the basement story, where we found her sitting in a small recess, and surrounded by a dozen negro girls; from the ages of eight to fifteen.  She was instructing them from the Testament, which most of them could read fluently.  She afterwards heard them recite some passages which they had committed to memory, and interspersed the recitations with appropriate remarks of advice and exhortation.

It is to be remarked that Miss E. commenced instructing after the abolition; before that event the idea of such an employment would have been rejected as degrading.

At ten o’clock on Sabbath morning, we drove to the chapel of the parish, which is a mile and a half from Lear’s.  It contains seats for five hundred persons.  The body of the house is appropriated to the apprentices.  There were upwards of four hundred persons, mostly apprentices, present, and a more quiet and attentive congregation we have seldom seen.  The people were neatly dressed.  A great number of the men wore black or blue cloth.  The females were generally dressed in white.  The choir was composed entirely of blacks, and sung with characteristic excellence.

There was so much intelligence in the countenances of the people, that we could scarcely believe we were looking on a congregation of lately emancipated slaves.

We returned to Lear’s.  Mr. C. noticed the change which has taken place in the observance of the Sabbath since emancipation.  Formerly the smoke would be often seen at this time of day pouring from the chimneys of the boiling-houses; but such a sight has not been seen since slavery disappeared.

Sunday used to be the day for the negroes to work on their grounds; now it is a rare thing for them to do so.  Sunday markets also prevailed throughout the island, until the abolition of slavery.

Mr. C. continued to speak of slavery.  “I sometimes wonder,” said he, “at myself, when I think how long I was connected with slavery; but self-interest and custom blinded me to its enormities.”  Taking a short walk towards sunset, we found ourselves on the margin of a beautiful pond, in which myriads of small gold fishes were disporting—­now circling about in rapid evolutions, and anon leaping above the surface, and displaying their brilliant sides in the rays of the setting sun.  When we had watched for some moments their happy gambols, Mr. C. turned around and broke a twig from a bush that stood behind us; “there is a bush,” said he, “which has committed many a murder.”  On requesting him to explain, he said, that the root of it was a most deadly poison, and that the slave women used to make a decoction of it and give to their infants to destroy them; many a child had been murdered in this way.  Mothers would kill their children, rather than see them grow up to be slaves.  “Ah,” he continued, in a solemn tone, pausing a moment and looking at us in a most earnest manner, “I could write a book about the evils of slavery.  I could write a book about these things.”