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 Gehazi 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 always went to a
white church, though while with us I am bound to say she never went to
any. She professed to read her Bible in her bedroom on Sundays; but we
suspected, from certain sounds and odors which used to steal out of this
sanctuary, that her piety more commonly found expression in dozing and
smoking.

I would not make a wanton jest here of Mrs. Johnson's anxiety to claim
honor for the African color, while denying this color in many of her own
family. It afforded a glimpse of the pain which all her people must
endure, however proudly they hide it or light-heartedly forget it, from
the despite and contumely to which they are guiltlessly born; and when I
thought how irreparable was this disgrace and calamity of a black skin,
and how irreparable it must be for ages yet, in this world where every