greatly. I told Jack yesterday,
that if any of the boys liked, when they had done their tasks, to come
and clear the paths that I want widened and trimmed, I would pay them a
certain small sum per hour for their labour; and behold, three boys have
come, having done their tasks early in the afternoon, to apply for
_work_ and _wages_: so much for a suggestion not barely twenty-four
hours old, and so much for a prospect of compensation!

In the evenings I attempted to walk out when the air was cool, but had to
run precipitately back into the house to escape from the clouds of
sand-flies that had settled on my neck and arms. The weather has suddenly
become intensely hot; at least, that is what it appears to me. After I had
come in I had a visit from Venus and her daughter, a young girl of ten
years old, for whom she begged a larger allowance of food as, she said,
what she received for her was totally inadequate to the girl's proper
nourishment. I was amazed, upon enquiry, to find that three quarts of
grits a week--that is not a pint a day--was considered a sufficient supply
for children of her age. The mother said her child was half-famished on
it, and it seemed to me terribly little.

My little workmen have brought me in from the woods three darling little
rabbits which they have contrived to catch. They seemed to me slightly
different from our English bunnies; and Captain F----, who called to-day,
gave me a long account of how they differed from the same animal in the
northern States. I did not like to mortify my small workmen by refusing
their present; but the poor little things must be left to run wild again,
for we have no conveniences for pets here, besides we are just weighing
anchor ourselves. I hope these poor little fluffy things will not meet any
rattlesnakes on their way back to the woods.

I had a visit for flannel from one of our Dianas to-day,--who had done her
task in the middle of the day, yet came to receive her flannel,--the most
horribly dirty human creature I ever beheld, unless indeed her child, whom
she brought with her, may have been half a degree dirtier.

The other day, Psyche (you remember the pretty under nurse, the poor thing
whose story I wrote you from the rice plantation) asked me if her mother
and brothers might be allowed to come and see her when we are gone away. I
asked her some questions about them, and she told me that one of her
brothers, who belonged to Mr. K----, was hired by that