I
soon acquired in the whole family that ascendancy which a well-bred
person who respects himself, and can keep his temper, must have over
passionate and undisciplined natures.

I became the receptacle of the complaints of all, and a sort of
confidential adviser. Don Jose imparted to me with more frankness than
good taste his chagrins with regard to his wife's indolence,
ill-temper, and bad management, and his wife in turn omitted no
opportunity to vent complaints against her husband for similar reasons.
I endeavored, to the best of my ability, to act a friendly part by both.
It never was in my nature to see anything that needed to be done without
trying to do it, and it was impossible to work at all without becoming
so interested in my work as to do far more than I had agreed to do. I
assisted Don Jose about many of his affairs; brought his neglected
accounts into order; and suggested from time to time arrangements which
relieved the difficulties which had been brought on by disorder and
neglect. In fact, I became, as he said, quite a necessary of life to
him.

In regard to the children, I had a more difficult task. The children of
Don Jose by his present wife had been systematically stimulated by the
negroes into a chronic habit of dislike and jealousy toward her children
by a former husband. On the slightest pretext, they were constantly
running to their father with complaints; and as the mother warmly
espoused the cause of her first children, criminations and
recriminations often convulsed the whole family.

In ill-regulated families in that region, the care of the children is
from the first in the hands of half-barbarized negroes, whose power of
moulding and assimilating childish minds is peculiar, so that the
teacher has to contend constantly with a savage element in the children
which seems to have been drawn in with the mother's milk. It is, in a
modified way, something the same result as if the child had formed its
manners in Dahomey or on the coast of Guinea. In the fierce quarrels
which were carried on between the children of this family, I had
frequent occasion to observe this strange, savage element, which
sometimes led to expressions and actions which would seem incredible in
civilized society.

The three children by Madame Mendoza's former husband were two girls of
sixteen and eighteen and a boy of fourteen. The four children of the
second marriage consisted of three boys and a daughter,--the eldest