this woman actually imagines that there will be no slaves in Heaven; isn’t that preposterous now? when by the account of most of the Southerners slavery itself must be Heaven, or something uncommonly like it.  Oh, if you could imagine how this title ‘Missis,’ addressed to me and to my children, shocks all my feelings!  Several times I have exclaimed, ‘For God’s sake do not call me that!’ and only been awakened, by the stupid amazement of the poor creatures I was addressing, to the perfect uselessness of my thus expostulating with them; once or twice indeed I have done more—­I have explained to them, and they appeared to comprehend me well, that I had no ownership over them, for that I held such ownership sinful, and that, though I was the wife of the man who pretends to own them, I was in truth no more their mistress than they were mine.  Some of them I know understood me, more of them did not.

Our servants—­those who have been selected to wait upon us in the house—­consist of a man, who is quite a tolerable cook (I believe this is a natural gift with them, as with Frenchmen); a dairywoman, who churns for us; a laundrywoman; her daughter, our housemaid, the aforesaid Mary; and two young lads of from fifteen to twenty, who wait upon us in the capacity of footmen.  As, however, the latter are perfectly filthy in their persons and clothes—­their faces, hands, and naked feet being literally encrusted with dirt—­their attendance at our meals is not, as you may suppose, particularly agreeable to me, and I dispense with it as often as possible.  Mary, too, is so intolerably offensive in her person that it is impossible to endure her proximity, and the consequence is that, amongst Mr. ——­’s slaves, I wait upon myself more than I have ever done in my life before.  About this same personal offensiveness, the Southerners you know insist that it is inherent with the race, and it is one of their most cogent reasons for keeping them as slaves.  But as this very disagreeable peculiarity does not prevent Southern women from hanging their infants at the breasts of negresses, nor almost every planter’s wife and daughter from having one or more little pet blacks sleeping like puppy dogs in their very bedchamber, nor almost every planter from admitting one or several of his female slaves to the still closer intimacy of his bed—­it seems to me that this objection to doing them right is not very valid.  I cannot imagine that they would smell much worse if they were free, or come in much closer contact with the delicate organs of their white, fellow countrymen; indeed, inasmuch as good deeds are spoken of as having a sweet savour before God, it might be supposed that the freeing of the blacks might prove rather an odoriferous process than the contrary.  However this may be, I must tell you that this potent reason for enslaving a whole race of people is no more potent with me than most of the others adduced to support the system, inasmuch as, from observation and some experience, I am strongly