steps, and letting them in from the outside. As the season expanded, and
the fine weather became confirmed, she modified even this form of service,
and spent her time in the fields, appearing at the house only when nature
importunately craved molasses. She had a parrot-like quickness, so far as
music was concerned, and learned from the Roman statuary to make the
groves and half-finished houses resound,

"Camicia rossa,
Ove t' ascondi?
T' appella Italia,--
Tu non respondi!"

She taught the Garibaldi song, moreover, to all the neighboring children,
so that I sometimes wondered if our street were not about to march upon
Rome in a body.

In her untamable disobedience, Naomi alone betrayed her sylvan blood, for
she was in all other respects negro and not Indian. But it was of her
aboriginal ancestry that Mrs. Johnson chiefly boasted,--when not engaged
in argument to maintain the superiority of the African race. She loved to
descant upon it as the cause and explanation of her own arrogant habit of
feeling; and she seemed indeed to have inherited something of the Indian's
hauteur along with the Ethiop's supple cunning and abundant amiability.
She gave many instances in which her pride had met and overcome the
insolence of employers, and the kindly old creature was by no means
singular in her pride of being reputed proud.

She could never have been a woman of strong logical faculties, but she had
in some things a very surprising and awful astuteness. She seldom
introduced any purpose directly, but bore all about it and then suddenly