free. Well, this task system is pursued on this estate; and thus it is
that the two carpenters were enabled to make the boat they sold for sixty
dollars. These tasks, of course, profess to be graduated according to the
sex, age, and strength of the labourer; but in many instances this is not
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