affections. With these thoughts passing in her mind, her imagination
wandered until she dropped into the sleep we have described.

There she slept, the blushes suffusing her cheeks, until old Aunt
Rachel, puffing and blowing like an exhausting engine, entered the
room. Aunty is the pink of a plantation mother: she is as black as
the blackest, has a face embodying all the good-nature of the
plantation, boasts of her dimensions, which she says are six feet,
well as anybody proportioned. Her head is done up in a flashy
bandana, the points nicely crosslain, and extending an elaborate
distance beyond her ears, nearly covering the immense circular rings
that hang from them. Her gingham dress, starched just so, her
whitest white apron, never worn before missus come, sets her off to
great advantage. Aunty is a good piece of property-tells us how many
hundred dollars there is in her-feels that she has been promoted
because Mas'r told somebody he would not take a dollar less for her.
She can superintend the domestic affairs of the mansion just as well
as anybody. In one hand she bears a cup of orange-grove coffee, in
the other a fan, made of palmetto-leaves.

"Gi'h-e-you!" she exclaimed. "If young missus aint nappin' just so
nice! I likes to cotch 'em just so;" and setting her tray upon a
stand, she views Franconia intently, and in the exuberance of her
feelings seats herself in front of her chair, fanning her with the
palmetto. The inquisitive and affectionate nature of the good old
slave was here presented in its purity. Nothing can be stronger,
nothing show the existence of happy associations more forcibly. The
old servant's attachment is proverbial,-his enthusiasm knows no
bounds,-Mas'r's comfort absorbs all his thoughts. Here, Aunt
Rachel's feelings rose beyond her power of restraint: she gazed on