she could of her own motion. Being told to say when she wanted an
afternoon, she explained that when she wanted an afternoon she always took
it without asking, but always planned so as not to discommode the ladies
with whom she lived. These, she said, had numbered twenty-seven within
three years, which made us doubt the success of her system in all cases,
though she merely held out the fact as an assurance of her faith in the
future, and a proof of the ease with which places were to be found. She
contended, moreover, that a lady who had for thirty years had a house of
her own, was in nowise bound to ask permission to receive visits from
friends where she might be living, but that they ought freely to come and
go like other guests. In this spirit she once invited her son-in-law,
Professor Jones of Providence, to dine with her; and her defied mistress,
on entering the dining-room, found the Professor at pudding and tea
there,--an impressively respectable figure in black clothes, with a black
face rendered yet more effective by a pair of green goggles. It appeared
that this dark professor was a light of phrenology in Rhode Island, and
that he was believed to have uncommon virtue in his science by reason of
being blind as well as black.

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