ith their jollities and noise.

Is it surprising, we must stop to ask, that the colored people are a
degraded class, when we consider the way in which the children live from
their very infancy. No work for them to do, nothing to learn, nobody to
care for them,--they are just left to grow and fatten like swine, till
they are in condition to be sold or to be broken in to their tasks in
the field. Utterly neglected, they contract, of necessity, lazy and
vicious habits, and it is no wonder they have to be whipped and broken
in to work as animals to the yoke or harness; and no wonder that under
such treatment for successive generations, the race should become so
reduced in mental and moral ability, as to be thought by many incapable
of ever reclaiming a position among the enlightened nations of the
earth. Oh, what a weight of guilt have the people of our country
incurred in allowing four millions of those poor people to be so trodden
down in the very midst of us!

When the children reached home again they found Mammy Grace's cabin
quite full of men and women, shouting, singing, and talking in a way
quite unintelligible to our little stranger. After she had dropped upon
her cot for the night, she lifted her head and ventured to ask what
those people had been about.

"Don' ye know, chile? We's had a praisin'-meetin'. We has 'em ebery
week, one week it's here, and one week it's ober to General Doolittle's,
ober de hill yonder. Ef ye's a good chile, honey, ye shall go wid yer
old mammy some time, ye shall."

"What do you do?" asked Tidy.

"We praises, chile,--praises de Lord, and den we prays too."

"What's that?"

"Laws, chile, ye don't know noffin. Whar's ye been fotched up all yer
days? Why, when we wants any ting we can't git oursef, nohow, we ask de
Lord to gib it to us--dat's what it is."

That first day and evening in Tidy's new home was a memorable day in her
experience. It seemed as if she had been lifted up two or three degrees
in existence, so much had she heard and learned. She had enough to
think about as she lay down to rest, for the first time away from Miss
Matilda's sheltering presence.

CHAPTER VIII. PRAYER.

As Tidy grew in stature she grew in favor also with those around her.
Spry but gentle in her movements, obedient, obliging, and apt to learn,
she secured the good-will of her master and mistress, and the visitors
that thronged to the place. If any little service was to be performed
which r