the case, as I think you will agree when I tell you that on Mr. ——­’s first visit to his estates he found that the men and the women who laboured in the fields had the same task to perform.  This was a noble admission of female equality, was it not?—­and thus it had been on the estate for many years past.  Mr. ——­, of course, altered the distribution of the work, diminishing the quantity done by the women.

I had a most ludicrous visit this morning from the midwife of the estate—­rather an important personage both to master and slave, as to her unassisted skill and science the ushering of all the young negroes into their existence of bondage is entrusted.  I heard a great deal of conversation in the dressing-room adjoining mine, while performing my own toilet, and presently Mr. ——­ opened my room-door, ushering in a dirty fat good-humoured looking old negress, saying, ’The midwife, Rose, wants to make your acquaintance.’  ‘Oh massa!’ shrieked out the old creature in a paroxysm of admiration, ‘where you get this lilly alablaster baby!’ For a moment I looked round to see if she was speaking of my baby; but no, my dear, this superlative apostrophe was elicited by the fairness of my skin—­so much for degrees of comparison.  Now, I suppose that if I chose to walk arm in arm with the dingiest mulatto through the streets of Philadelphia, nobody could possibly tell by my complexion that I was not his sister, so that the mere quality of mistress must have had a most miraculous effect upon my skin in the eyes of poor Rose.  But this species of outrageous flattery is as usual with these people as with the low Irish, and arises from the ignorant desire, common to both the races, of propitiating at all costs the fellow-creature who is to them as a Providence—­or rather, I should say, a fate—­for ’t is a heathen and no Christian relationship.  Soon after this visit, I was summoned into the wooden porch or piazza of the house, to see a poor woman who desired to speak to me.  This was none other than the tall emaciated-looking negress who, on the day of our arrival, had embraced me and my nurse with such irresistible zeal.  She appeared very ill to-day, and presently unfolded to me a most distressing history of bodily afflictions.  She was the mother of a very large family, and complained to me that, what with child-bearing and hard field labour, her back was almost broken in two.  With an almost savage vehemence of gesticulation she suddenly tore up her scanty clothing, and exhibited a spectacle with which I was inconceivably shocked and sickened.  The facts, without any of her corroborating statements, bore tolerable witness to the hardships of her existence.  I promised to attend to her ailments and give her proper remedies; but these are natural results, inevitable and irremediable ones, of improper treatment of the female frame—­and though there may be alleviation, there cannot be any cure when once the beautiful and wonderful structure has been thus made the victim of ignorance, folly, and wickedness.