[Footnote 22:  Since the preceding pages were printed off, I have been favoured with a communication from the Rev. J. Curtin, to whom among other acquaintances of Mr. Wood’s in this country, the entire proof sheets of this pamphlet had been sent for inspection.  Mr. Curtin corrects some omissions and inaccuracies in Mary Prince’s narrative (see page 17,) by stating, 1.  That she was baptized, not in August, but on the 6th of April, 1817; 2.  That sometime before her baptism, on her being admitted a catechumen, preparatory to that holy ordinance, she brought a note from her owner, Mr. Wood, recommending her for religious instruction, &c.; 3.  That it was his usual practice, when any adult slaves came on week days to school, to require their owners’ permission for their attendance; but that on Sundays the chapel was open indiscriminately to all.—­Mary, after a personal interview with Mr. Curtin, and after hearing his letter read by me, still maintains that Mr. Wood’s note recommended her for baptism merely, and that she never received any religious instruction whatever from Mr. and Mrs. Wood, or from any one else at that period beyond what she has stated in her narrative.  In regard to her non-admission to the Sunday school without permission from her owners, she admits that she may possibly have mistaken the clergyman’s meaning on that point, but says that such was certainly her impression at the time, and the actual cause of her non-attendance.

Mr. Curtin finds in his books some reference to Mary’s connection with a Captain ——­, (the individual, I believe, alluded to by Mr. Phillips at page 32); but he states that when she attended his chapel she was always decently and becomingly dressed, and appeared to him to be in a situation of trust in her mistress’s family.

Mr. Curtin offers no comment on any other part of Mary’s statement; but he speaks in very favourable, though general terms of the respectability of Mr. Wood, whom he had known for many years in Antigua; and of Mrs. Wood, though she was not personally known to him, he says, that he had “heard her spoken of by those of her acquaintance, as a lady of very mild and amiable manners.”

Another friend of Mr. and Mrs. Wood, a lady who had been their guest both in Antigua and England, alleges that Mary has grossly misrepresented them in her narrative; and says that she “can vouch for their being the most benevolent, kind-hearted people that can possibly live.”  She has declined, however, to furnish me with any written correction of the misrepresentations she complains of, although I offered to insert her testimony in behalf of her friends, if sent to me in time.  And having already kept back the publication a fortnight waiting for communications of this sort, I will not delay it longer.  Those who have withheld their strictures have only themselves to blame.