could scarcely
contain my rage when the rascally cowskin was applied to them, or my
laughter when, smarting under its lash, they exclaimed, "Benedicta
Mulieribus," applying their little hands with immoderate pressure to
the afflicted part.

I could have found in my heart to have wrested the whip out of the
hands of the young negro, and applied it with all my might to him, and
his old villain of a master, and father of these poor children, as I
soon found he was. My patience was almost gone when the second girl
received a lash for her "Plena Gratia." She screamed, and danced, and
lifted up her poor legs in agony, rubbing herself on her "_west_"
side, as the Philadelphia ladies call it, with as much assiduity as if
it had been one of those cases in which friction is prescribed by the
faculty.

But the climax was yet to come. A grand stage effect was to be
produced before the falling of the curtain. The youngest girl was so
defective in her lesson, that not one word of it could be extracted
from her, even by the cowskin; nothing but piercing shrieks, enough
to make my heart bleed, could the poor victim utter. Irritated at
the child's want of capacity to repeat by rote what she could not
understand, the old man darted from his seat, and struck her senseless
to the ground.

I could bear no more. My first impulse was to wrest the cowskin from
the negro's hand, and revenge the poor bleeding child as she lay
motionless on the ground; but a moment's reflection convinced me that
such a step would only have brought down a double weight of punishment
on the victims when I was gone; so, catching up my hat, I turned away
with disgust, and walked slowly towards the town and bay of Port
Praya, reflecting as I went along what pleasant ideas the poor
creatures must entertain of religion, when the name of God and of the
cowskin were invariably associated in their minds. I began to parody
one of Watts's hymns--

"Lord! how delightful 'tis to see
A whole assembly worship thee."

The indignation I felt against this barbarous and ignorant negro was
not unmingled with some painful recollections of my own younger days,
when, in a Christian and protestant country, the bible and prayer-book
had been made objects of terror to my mind; tasks, greater than
my capacity could compass, and floggings in proportion were not
calculated to forward the cause of religious instruction in the mind
of an obstinate boy.

Reaching the water-side, I