One of my industries this morning has been cutting out another dress for one of our women, who had heard of my tailoring prowess at the rice island.  The material, as usual, was a miserable cotton, many-coloured like the scarf of Iris.  While shaping it for my client, I ventured to suggest the idea of the possibility of a change of the nethermost as well as the uppermost garment.  This, I imagine, is a conception that has never dawned upon the female slave mind on this plantation.  They receive twice a year a certain supply of clothing, and wear them (as I have heard some nasty fine ladies do their stays, for fear they should get out of shape), without washing, till they receive the next suit.  Under these circumstances I think it is unphilosophical, to say the least of it, to speak of the negroes as a race whose unfragrance is heaven-ordained, and the result of special organisation.

I must tell you that I have been delighted, surprised, and the very least perplexed, by the sudden petition on the part of our young waiter, Aleck, that I will teach him to read.  He is a very intelligent lad of about sixteen, and preferred his request with an urgent humility that was very touching.  I told him I would think about it.  I mean to do it.  I will do it,—­and yet, it is simply breaking the laws of the government under which I am living.  Unrighteous laws are made to be broken,—­perhaps,—­but then, you see, I am a woman, and Mr. ——­ stands between me and the penalty.  If I were a man, I would do that and many a thing besides, and doubtless should be shot some fine day from behind a tree by some good neighbour, who would do the community a service by quietly getting rid of a mischievous incendiary; and I promise you in such a case no questions would be asked, and my lessons would come to a speedy and silent end; but teaching slaves to read is a fineable offence, and I am feme couverte, and my fines must be paid by my legal owner, and the first offence of the sort is heavily fined, and the second more heavily fined, and for the third, one is sent to prison.  What a pity it is I can’t begin with Aleck’s third lesson, because going to prison can’t be done by proxy, and that penalty would light upon the right shoulders!  I certainly intend to teach Aleck to read.  I certainly won’t tell Mr. ——­ anything about it.  I’ll leave him to find it out, as slaves, and servants and children, and all oppressed, and ignorant, and uneducated and unprincipled people do; then, if he forbids me I can stop—­perhaps before then the lad may have learnt his letters.  I begin to perceive one most admirable circumstance in this slavery:  you are absolute on your own plantation.  No slaves’ testimony avails against you, and no white testimony exists but such as you choose to admit.  Some owners have a fancy for maiming their slaves, some brand them, some pull out their teeth, some shoot them a little here and there (all details gathered from advertisements of runaway slaves in southern papers); now they do all this on their plantations, where nobody comes to see, and I’ll teach Aleck to read, for nobody is here to see, at least nobody whose seeing I mind; and I’ll teach every other creature that wants to learn.  I haven’t much more than a week to remain in this blessed purgatory, in that last week perhaps I may teach the boy enough to go on alone when I am gone.