said St Clare
laughing, as he turned on his heel and walked away.'

Augustine St Clare was a wealthy citizen of New Orleans, and possessed
a domestic establishment of great extent and elegance, with a body of
servants in the condition of slaves, to whom he was an indulgent
master. The description of this splendid mansion, with its lounging
and wasteful attendants, its indolent, pretty, and capricious
lady-mistress, and the account of Ophelia, a shrewd New-England
cousin, who managed the household affairs, must be considered the
best, or at least the most amusing portion of the work. The authoress
also dwells with fondness on the character of the gentle Eva, a child
of uncommon talents, but so delicate in health, so ethereal, that
while still on earth, she seems already an angel of paradise leading
and beckoning to Heaven. Eva was kind to everybody--kind even to
Topsy, a negro girl whom St Clare had one day bought out of mere
charity, on seeing her cruelly lashed by her former master and
mistress. Topsy is a fine picture of a brutalised young negro, who
never speaks the truth even by chance, and steals because she cannot
help it. Every one gives up Topsy as utterly irreclaimable--all except
the gentle Eva. Caught in a fresh act of theft, Topsy is led away by
Eva. 'There was a little glass-room at the corner of the veranda,
which St Clare used as a sort of reading-room; and Eva and Topsy
disappeared into this place.

"What's Eva going about now?" said St Clare; "I mean to see." And
advancing on tiptoe, he lifted up a curtain that covered the
glass-door, and looked in. In a moment, laying his finger on his lips,
he made a silent gesture to Miss Ophelia to come and look. There sat
the two children on the floor, with their side-faces towards them,
Topsy with her usual air of careless drollery and unconcern; but,
opposite to her, Eva, her whole face fervent with feeling, and tears
in her large eyes.

"What does make you so bad, Topsy? Why won't you try and be good?
Don't you love _anybody_, Topsy?"

"Donno nothing 'bout love. I loves candy and sich--that's all," said
Topsy.

"But you love your father and mother?"

"Never had none, ye know. I telled ye that, Miss Eva."

"Oh, I know," said Eva sadly; "but hadn't you any brother, or sister,
or aunt, or"----

"No, none on 'm--never had nothing nor nobody."

"But, Topsy, if you'd only try to be good, you might"----

"Couldn't never be nothin' but a nigger, if I was