it is utterly
impossible to recognise any part of the quadruped creature sheep with
which my eyes have hitherto become acquainted. Eat it, one may and does
thankfully; name it, one could not by any possibility. Having submitted to
this for some time, I at length enquired why a decent usual Christian
joint of mutton--leg, shoulder, or saddle--was never brought to table: the
reply was that the _carpenter_ always cut up the meat, and that he did not
know how to do it otherwise than by dividing it into so many thick square
pieces, and proceeding to chop it up on that principle; and the
consequence of this is that _four lumps_ or _chunks_ are all that a whole
sheep ever furnishes to our table by this artistic and economical process.

This morning I have been to the hospital to see a poor woman who has just
enriched Mr. ---- by _borning_ him another slave. The poor little
piccaninny, as they called it, was not one bit uglier than white babies
under similarly novel circumstances, except in one particular, that it had
a head of hair like a trunk, in spite of which I had all the pains in the
world in persuading its mother not to put a cap upon it. I bribed her
finally, by the promise of a pair of socks instead, with which I undertook
to endow her child, and, moreover, actually prevailed upon her to forego
the usual swaddling and swathing process, and let her poor baby be dressed
at its first entrance into life as I assured her both mine had been.

On leaving the hospital I visited the huts all along the street,
confiscating sundry refractory baby caps among shrieks and outcries,
partly of laughter and partly of real ignorant alarm for the consequence.
I think if this infatuation for hot head-dresses continues, I shall make
shaving the children's heads the only condition upon which they shall be
allowed to wear caps.

On Sunday morning I went over to Darien to church. Our people's church was
closed, the minister having gone to officiate elsewhere. With laudable
liberality I walked into the opposite church of a different, not to say
opposite sect: here I heard a sermon, the opening of which will,
probably, edify you as it did me, viz., that if a man was _just in all his
dealings_ he was apt to think he did all that could be required of
him,--and no wide mistake either one might suppose. But is it not
wonderful how such words can be spoken here, with the most absolute
unconsciousness of their tremendous bearing upon the existence