dly about it, too, when it left upon the character the marks of
courtesy and good breeding. I wish I could say as much for the effect of
modern ideas. The negroes in Mandeville were, perhaps, as happy in their
old condition as they have been since their glorious emancipation, and
some of them to this day speak regretfully of a time when children did
not die of neglect; when the sick and the aged were taken care of, and
the strong and healthy were, at least, as well looked after as their
owner's cattle.

Slavery could not last; but neither can the condition last which has
followed it. The equality between black and white is a forced equality
and not a real one, and nature in the long run has her way, and
readjusts in their proper relations what theorists and philanthropists
have disturbed.

I was not Miss Roy's only guest. An American lady and gentleman were
staying there; he, I believe, for his health, as the climate of
Mandeville is celebrated. Americans, whatever may be their faults, are
always unaffected; and so are easy to get on with. We dined together,
and talked of the place and its inhabitants. They had been struck like
myself with the manners of the peasants, which were something entirely
new to them. The lady said, and without expressing the least
disapproval, that she had fallen in with an old slave who told her that,
thanks to God, he had seen good times. 'He was bred in a good home, with
a master and mistress belonging to him. What the master and mistress had
the slaves had, and there was no difference; and his master used to
visit at King's House, and his men were all proud of him. Yes, glory be
to God, he had seen good times.'

In the evening we sat out in the verandah in the soft sweet air, the
husband and I smoking our cigars, and the lady not minding it. They had
come to Mandeville, as we go to Italy, to escape the New England winter.
They had meant to stay but a few days; they found it so charming that
they had stayed for many weeks. We talked on till twilight became night,
and then appeared a show of natural pyrotechnics which beat anything of
the kind which I had ever seen or read of: fireflies as large as
cockchafers flitting round us among the leaves of the creepers, with two
long antennae, at the point of each of which hangs out a blazing
lanthorn. The unimaginative colonists call them gig-lamps. Had
Shakespeare ever heard of them, they would have played round Ferdinand
and Miranda in Prospero