I am loath to confess that Mrs. Johnson had not a flattering opinion of
the Caucasian race in all respects. In fact, she had very good
philosophical and Scriptural reasons for looking upon us as an upstart
people of new blood, who had come into their whiteness by no creditable
or pleasant process. The late Mr. Johnson, who had died in the West
Indies, whither he voyaged for his health in quality of cook upon a
Down-East schooner, was a man of letters, and had written a book to show
the superiority of the black over the white branches of the human
family. In this he held that, as all islands have been at their
discovery found peopled by blacks, we must needs believe that humanity
was first created of that color. Mrs. Johnson could not show us her
husband's work (a sole copy in the library of an English gentleman at
Port au Prince is not to be bought for money), but she often developed
its arguments to the lady of the house; and one day, with a great show
of reluctance, and many protests that no personal slight was meant,
let fall the fact that Mr. Johnson believed the white race descended
from Gehaz, the leper, upon whom the leprosy of Naaman fell when the
latter returned by Divine favor to his original blackness. "And he
went out from his presence a leper as white as snow," said Mrs.
Johnson, quoting irrefutable Scripture. "Leprosy, leprosy," she
added thoughtfully,--"nothing but leprosy bleached you out."

It seems to me much in her praise that she did not exult in our taint
and degradation, as some white philosophers used to do in the opposite
idea that a part of the human family were cursed to lasting blackness
and slavery in Ham and his children, but even told us of a remarkable
approach to whiteness in many of her own offspring. In a kindred spirit
of charity, no doubt, she refused ever to attend church with people of
her elder and wholesomer blood. When she went to church, she said, she