- ried in her arms two of the children and a bundle, while the
third child held to her skirts.
A party of fashionably-dressed people took the train for Charleston—two families, apparently, returning from a visit to their plantations. They came to the station in handsome coaches. Some minutes before the rest, there entered the car, in which I was then again alone, and reclining on a bench in the corner, an old nurse, with a baby, and two young negro women, having care of half a dozen children, mostly girls, from three to fifteen years of age. As they closed the door, the negro girls seemed to resume a conversation, or quarrel. Their language was loud and obscene, such as I never heard before from any but the most depraved and beastly women of the streets. Upon observing me, they dropped their voices, but not with any appearance of shame, and continued their altercation, until their mistresses entered. The white children, in the mean time, had listened, without any appearance of wonder or annoyance. The moment the ladies opened the door, they became silent.[1]*
- ↑ From the Southern Cultivator, June, 1855.—"Children are fond of the
company of negroes, not only because the deference shown them makes them feel
perfectly at ease, but the subjects of conversation are on a level with their capacity;
while the simple tales, and the witch and ghost stories, so common among negroes,
excite the young imagination and enlist the feelings. If, in this association, the
child becomes familiar with indelicate, vulgar, and lascivious manners and conversation,
an impression is made upon the mind and heart, which lasts for years—perhaps
for life. Could we, in all cases, trace effects to their real causes, I doubt
not but many young men and women, of respectable parentage and bright prospects,
who have made shipwreck of all their earthly hopes, have been led to the fatal
step by the seeds of corruption which, in the days of childhood and youth, were
sown in their hearts by the indelicate and lascivious manners and conversation of
their father's negroes."
From an Address of Chancellor Harper, prepared for and read before the Society for the Advancement of Learning, of South Carolina.—"I have said the tendency of our institution is to elevate the female character, as well as that of the other sex, for similar reasons.
"And, permit me to say, that this elevation of the female character is no less
