heir work at half-past three.
Saw Jema with her child, that ridiculous image of Driver Bran, in her
arms, in spite of whose whitey brown skin she still maintains that its
father is a man as black as herself--and she (to use a most extraordinary
comparison I heard of a negro girl making with regard to her mother) is as
black as 'de hinges of hell.' Query: Did she really mean hinges--or
angels? The angels of hell is a polite and pretty paraphrase for devils,
certainly. In complimenting a woman, called Joan, upon the tidy condition
of her house, she answered, with that cruel humility that is so bad an
element in their character, 'Missis no 'spect to find coloured folks'
house clean as white folks.' The mode in which they have learned to accept
the idea of their own degradation and unalterable inferiority, is the most
serious impediment that I see in the way of their progress, since
assuredly, 'self-love is not so vile a sin as self-neglecting.' In the
same way yesterday, Abraham the cook, in speaking of his brother's theft
at the rice island, said 'it was a shame even for a coloured man to do
such things.' I labour hard, whenever any such observation is made, to
explain to them that the question is one of moral and mental culture,--not
the colour of an integument,--and assure them, much to my own comfort,
whatever it may be to theirs, that white people are as dirty and as
dishonest as coloured folks, when they have suffered the same lack of
decent training. If I could but find one of these women, on whose mind the
idea had dawned that she was neither more nor less than my equal, I think
I should embrace her in an ecstacy of hopefulness.

In the evening, while I was inditing my journal for your edification, Jema
made her appearance with her Bran-brown baby, having walked all the way
down from Busson Hill to claim a little sugar I had promised her. She had
made her child perfectly clean, and it looked quite pretty. When I asked
her what I should give her the sugar in, she snatched her filthy
handkerchief off her head; but I declined this sugar basin, and gave it
to her in some paper. Hannah came on the same errand.

After all, dear E----, we shall not leave Georgia so soon as I expected;
we cannot get off for at least another week. You know, our movements are
apt to be both tardy and uncertain. I am getting sick in spirit of my stay
here; but I think the spring heat is beginning to affect me miserably, and
I long for a coole