icial adornment of paint, and
time and storms had worn off the bright color of the wood, leaving them
almost as black as buildings charred by a conflagration.

St. Michael's had, in former years, (previous to 1833, for that was the
year I went to reside there,) enjoyed some reputation as a ship building
community, but that business had almost entirely given place to oyster
fishing, for the Baltimore and Philadelphia markets--a course of life
highly unfavorable to morals, industry, and manners. Miles river was
broad, and its oyster fishing{145} grounds were extensive; and the
fishermen were out, often, all day, and a part of the night, during
autumn, winter and spring. This exposure was an excuse for carrying
with them, in considerable quanties(sic), spirituous liquors, the then
supposed best antidote for cold. Each canoe was supplied with its jug
of rum; and tippling, among this class of the citizens of St. Michael's,
became general. This drinking habit, in an ignorant population,
fostered coarseness, vulgarity and an indolent disregard for the social
improvement of the place, so that it was admitted, by the few sober,
thinking people who remained there, that St. Michael's had become a very
_unsaintly_, as well as unsightly place, before I went there to reside.

I left Baltimore for St. Michael's in the month of March, 1833. I
know the year, because it was the one succeeding the first cholera in
Baltimore, and was the year, also, of that strange phenomenon, when the
heavens seemed about to part with its starry train. I witnessed this
gorgeous spectacle, and was awe-struck. The air seemed filled with
bright, descending messengers from the sky. It was about daybreak when I
saw this sublime scene. I was not without the suggestion, at the moment,
that it might be the harbinger of the coming of the Son of Man; and,
in my then state of mind, I was prepared to hail Him as my friend and
deliverer. I had read, that the "stars shall fall from heaven"; and
they were now falling. I was suffering much in my mind. It did seem that
every time the young tendrils of my affection became attached, they were
rudely broken by some unnatural outside power; and I was beginning to
look away to heaven for the rest denied me on earth.

But, to my story. It was now more than seven years since I had lived
with Master Thomas Auld, in the family of my old master, on Col. Lloyd's
plantation. We were almost entire strangers to each other; for, when I