or
coloured folks--'Good for coloured folks, missis; me 'spect not good
enough for white people.' That 'spect, meaning _ex_pect, has sometimes a
possible meaning of _sus_pect, which would give the sentence in which it
occurs a very humorous turn, and I always take the benefit of that
interpretation. After exhausting the charms of our occupation, finding
that cat-fish were likely to be our principal haul, I left the river and
went my rounds to the hospitals. On my way I encountered two batches of
small black fry, Hannah's children and poor Psyche's children, looking
really as neat and tidy as children of the bettermost class of artisans
among ourselves. These people are so quick and so imitative that it would
be the easiest thing in the world to improve their physical condition by
appealing to their emulative propensities. Their passion for what is
_genteel_ might be used most advantageously in the same direction; and
indeed, I think it would be difficult to find people who offered such a
fair purchase by so many of their characteristics to the hand of the
reformer.

Returning from the hospital I was accosted by poor old Teresa, the
wretched negress who had complained to me so grievously of her back being
broken by hard work and child-bearing. She was in a dreadful state of
excitement, which she partly presently communicated to me, because she
said Mr. O---- had ordered her to be flogged for having complained to me
as she did. It seems to me that I have come down here to be tortured, for
this punishing these wretched creatures for crying out to me for help is
really converting me into a source of increased misery to them. It is
almost more than I can endure to hear these horrid stories of lashings
inflicted because I have been invoked; and though I dare say Mr. ----,
thanks to my passionate appeals to him, gives me little credit for
prudence or self-command, I have some, and I exercise it too when I listen
to such tales as these with my teeth set fast and my lips closed. Whatever
I may do to the master, I hold my tongue to the slaves, and I wonder how I
do it.

In the afternoon I rowed with Mr. ---- to another island in the broad
waters of the Altamaha, called Tunno's Island, to return the visit of a
certain Dr. T----, the proprietor of the island, named after him, as our
rice swamp is after Major ----. I here saw growing in the open air the
most beautiful gardinias I ever beheld; the branches were as high and as
thick