work, not feeling at all sure that urging a conversation with me
would be accepted as any excuse for an uncompleted task, or avert the
fatal infliction of the usual award of stripes; so I hurried off and left
them to their hoeing.

On my way home I was encountered by London, our Methodist preacher, who
accosted me with a request for a prayer-book and Bible, and expressed his
regret at hearing that we were so soon going to St. Simon's. I promised
him his holy books, and asked him how he had learned to read, but found it
impossible to get him to tell me. I wonder if he thought he should be
putting his teacher, whoever he was, in danger of the penalty of the law
against instructing the slaves, if he told me who he was; it was
impossible to make him do so, so that, besides his other good qualities,
he appears to have that most unusual one of all in an uneducated
person--discretion. He certainly is a most remarkable man.

After parting with him, I was assailed by a small gang of children,
clamouring for the indulgence of some meat, which they besought me to
give them. Animal food is only allowed to certain of the harder working
men, hedgers and ditchers, and to them only occasionally, and in very
moderate rations. My small cannibals clamoured round me for flesh, as if I
had had a butcher's cart in my pocket, till I began to laugh and then to
run, and away they came, like a pack of little black wolves, at my heels,
shrieking, 'Missis, you gib me piece meat, missis, you gib me meat,' till
I got home. At the door I found another petitioner, a young woman named
Maria, who brought a fine child in her arms, and demanded a present of a
piece of flannel. Upon my asking her who her husband was, she replied,
without much hesitation, that she did not possess any such appendage. I
gave another look at her bonny baby, and went into the house to get the
flannel for her. I afterwards heard from Mr. ---- that she and two other
girls of her age, about seventeen, were the only instances on the island
of women with illegitimate children.

After I had been in the house a little while, I was summoned out again to
receive the petition of certain poor women in the family-way to have their
work lightened. I was, of course, obliged to tell them that I could not
interfere in the matter, that their master was away, and that, when he
came back, they must present their request to him: they said they had
already begged 'massa,' and he had refused, and