"stories all 'bout ourselves, Missus," and used to criticise most freely, and tell me where I had made mistakes, and how I was to alter them. When it was right and they were satisfied they used to be so pleased and say, "Dat quite right 'last, Missus, dat 'xactly de way we lib." Then I felt proud, even although my audience consisted of but my brown nurse and a tattered and disreputable-looking old negress, cleaner-in-general to the household.
If you can join your approval to theirs, I shall feel that these little stories have received more than their fair share of praise.
I do not, indeed, feel towards them as a mother, but rather as one who, finding them wandering neglected and forlorn, took pity on the little foundlings, and, clothing them in simplest words, now sends them out into the wide world to seek their fate. It is from knowledge of your own universal good will and sympathy that I ask you to be godmother to the poor little waifs.
Santa Anna, West Indies.
