old freedman said to me one day, "De
Lord make me suffer long time, Miss. 'Peared like we nebber was gwine to
git troo. But now we's free. He bring us all out right at las'." In
their darkest hours they have clung to Him, and we know He will not
forsake them.

"The poor among men shall rejoice,
For the terrible one is brought to nought."

While writing these pages I am once more nearing Port Royal. The
Fortunate Isles of Freedom are before me. I shall again tread the
flower-skirted wood-paths of St. Helena, and the sombre pines and
bearded oaks shall whisper in the sea-wind their grave welcome. I shall
dwell again among "mine own people." I shall gather my scholars about
me, and see smiles of greeting break over their dusk faces. My heart
sings a song of thanksgiving, at the thought that even I am permitted to
do something for a long-abused race, and aid in promoting a higher,
holier, and happier life on the Sea Islands.

A FAST-DAY AT FOXDEN.

I.

Colonel Elijah Prowley, like all good and true genealogists, held the
mother-country in tender reverence. For, if there be any truth in the
well-known _mot_ which calls Paris the Paradise of virtuous Yankees, it
is limited to a few city-bucks of mongrel caste. England must be the
Promised Land for the genuine representative of the Puritan. Whatever we
may have felt about her lately,--and I confess there have been times
when the declaration of the Fee-Faw-Fum giant of nursery-romance seemed
to be of a moral and praiseworthy character,--there is no doubt, that,
in the year of grace of which I write, and in the regards of many
ratherish-scholarly gentlemen of our country-towns, the British Islands
were the nearest terrestrial correspondences to the Islands of the
Blest. About the massive Past Colonel Prowley never ceased to thrust his
epistolary tendrils. Was not Great Britain a genealogical hunting-ground
where game of rarest plumage might be started? Was not a
family-connection with Sir Walter Raleigh (whose name should be written
_Praleigh_, a common corruption of "Prowley" in the sixteenth century)
susceptible of the clearest proof? There were, in fact, few
distinguished Englishmen of the present day, who, if a provoking
ancestor or two could be unearthed, might not be shown to have the
Prowley fluid in their veins. To many of these eminent personages the
head of the American branch of the family had written, and with several
he had succeeded in estab