hat fashion.

The Calibanish wonderment of all my visitors at the exceedingly coarse and
simple furniture and rustic means of comfort of my abode is very droll. I
have never inhabited any apartment so perfectly devoid of what we should
consider the common decencies of life; but to them my rude chintz-covered
sofa and common pine-wood table, with its green baize cloth, seem the
adornings of a palace; and often in the evening, when my bairns are
asleep, and M---- up-stairs keeping watch over them, and I sit writing
this daily history for your edification,--the door of the great barn-like
room is opened stealthily, and one after another, men and women come
trooping silently in, their naked feet falling all but inaudibly on the
bare boards as they betake themselves to the hearth, where they squat down
on their hams in a circle,--the bright blaze from the huge pine logs,
which is the only light of this half of the room, shining on their sooty
limbs and faces, and making them look like a ring of ebony idols
surrounding my domestic hearth. I have had as many as fourteen at a time
squatting silently there for nearly half an hour, watching me writing at
the other end of the room. The candles on my table give only light enough
for my own occupation, the fire light illuminates the rest of the
apartment; and you cannot imagine anything stranger than the effect of all
these glassy whites of eyes and grinning white teeth turned towards me,
and shining in the flickering light. I very often take no notice of them
at all, and they seem perfectly absorbed in contemplating me. My evening
dress probably excites their wonder and admiration no less than my rapid
and continuous writing, for which they have sometimes expressed
compassion, as if they thought it must be more laborious than hoeing;
sometimes at the end of my day's journal I look up and say suddenly,
'Well, what do you want?' when each black figure springs up at once, as if
moved by machinery, they all answer, 'Me come say ha do (how d'ye do),
missis;' and then they troop out as noiselessly as they entered, like a
procession of sable dreams, and I go off in search, if possible, of whiter
ones.

Two days ago I had a visit of great interest to me from several lads from
twelve to sixteen years old, who had come to beg me to give them work. To
make you understand this you must know, that wishing very much to cut some
walks and drives through the very picturesque patches of woodland no