second summer was over. I am sure that nothing can be worse than this
system, and I attribute much of the wretched ill health of young American
mothers to over nursing; and of course a process that destroys their
health and vigour completely must affect most unfavourably the child they
are suckling. It is a grievous mistake. I remember my charming friend
F---- D---- telling me that she had nursed her first child till her second
was born--a miraculous statement, which I can only believe because she
told it me herself. Whenever anything seems absolutely impossible, the
word of a true person is the only proof of it worth anything.

* * * * *

Dear E----. I have been riding into the swamp behind the new house; I had
a mind to survey the ground all round it before going away, to see what
capabilities it afforded for the founding of a garden, but I confess it
looked very unpromising. Trying to return by another way, I came to a
morass, which, after contemplating, and making my horse try for a few
paces, I thought it expedient not to attempt. A woman called Charlotte,
who was working in the field, seeing my dilemma and the inglorious retreat
I was about to make, shouted to me at the top of her voice, 'You no turn
back, missis! if you want to go through, send, missis, send! you hab slave
enough, nigger enough, let 'em come, let 'em fetch planks, and make de
bridge; what you say dey must do,--send, missis, send, missis!' It seemed
to me, from the lady's imperative tone in my behalf, that if she had been
in my place, she would presently have had a corduroy road through the
swamp of prostrate 'niggers,' as she called her family in Ham, and ridden
over the same dry-hoofed; and to be sure, if I pleased, so might I, for,
as she very truly said, 'what you say, missis, they must do.' Instead of
summoning her sooty tribe, however, I backed my horse out of the swamp,
and betook myself to another pretty woodpath, which only wants widening to
be quite charming. At the end of this, however, I found swamp the second,
and out of this having been helped by a grinning facetious personage, most
appropriately named Pun, I returned home in dudgeon, in spite of what dear
Miss M---- calls the 'moral suitability' of finding a foul bog at the end
of every charming wood path or forest ride in this region.

In the afternoon, I drove to Busson Hill, to visit the people there. I
found that both the men and women had done t