. ----'s declaration that he will
receive no more statements of grievances or petitions for redress through
me, makes me as desirous now of shunning the vain appeals of these
unfortunates as I used to be of receiving and listening to them. The
imploring cry, 'Oh missis!' that greets me whichever way I turn, makes me
long to stop my ears now; for what can I say or do any more for them? The
poor little favours--the rice, the sugar, the flannel--that they beg for
with such eagerness, and receive with such exuberant gratitude, I can, it
is true, supply, and words and looks of pity and counsel of patience and
such instruction in womanly habits of decency and cleanliness, as may
enable them to better, in some degree, their own hard lot; but to the
entreaty, 'Oh missis, you speak to massa for us! Oh missis, you beg massa
for us! Oh missis, you tell massa for we, he sure do as you say!'--I
cannot now answer as formerly, and I turn away choking and with eyes full
of tears from the poor creatures, not even daring to promise any more the
faithful transmission of their prayers.

The women who visited me yesterday evening were all in the family-way, and
came to entreat of me to have the sentence (what else can I call it?)
modified, which condemns them to resume their labour of hoeing in the
fields three weeks after their confinement. They knew, of course, that I
cannot interfere with their appointed labour, and therefore their sole
entreaty was that I would use my influence with Mr. ---- to obtain for
them a month's respite from labour in the field after child-bearing. Their
principal spokeswoman, a woman with a bright sweet face, called Mary, and
a very sweet voice, which is by no means an uncommon excellence among
them, appealed to my own experience; and while she spoke of my babies, and
my carefully tended, delicately nursed, and tenderly watched confinement
and convalescence, and implored me to have a kind of labour given to them
less exhausting during the month after their confinement, I held the table
before me so hard in order not to cry that I think my fingers ought to
have left a mark on it. At length I told them that Mr. ---- had forbidden
me to bring him any more complaints from them, for that he thought the
ease with which I received and believed their stories only tended to make
them discontented, and that, therefore, I feared I could not promise to
take their petitions to him; but that he would be coming down to 'the
po