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For you to educatedidnt I tell you? Youre always preaching about educating. I thought I would make you a present of a fresh-caught specimen, and let you try your hand on her, and bring her up in the way she should go. I dont want her, I am sure;I have more to do with em now than I want to. Thats you Christians, all over!youll get up a society, and get some poor missionary to spend all his days among just such heathen. But let me see one of you that would take one into your house with you, and take the labor of their conversion on yourselves! No; when it comes to that, they are dirty and disagreeable, and its too much care, and so on. Augustine, you know I didnt think of it in that light, said Miss Ophelia, evidently softening. Well, it might be a real missionary work, said she, looking rather more favorably on the child. St. Clare had touched the right string. Miss Ophelias conscientiousness was ever on the alert. But, she added, I really didnt see the need of buying this one;there are enough now, in your house, to take all my time and skill. Well, then, Cousin, said St. Clare, drawing her aside, I ought to beg your pardon for my good-for- nothing speeches. You are so good, after all, that theres no sense in them. Why, the fact is, this concern belonged to a couple of drunken creatures that keep a low restaurant that I have to pass by every day, and I was tired of hearing her screaming, and them beating and swearing at her. She looked bright and funny, too, as if something might be made of her;so I bought her, and Ill give her to you. Try, now, and give her a good orthodox New England bringing up, and see what itll make of her. You know I havent any gift that way; but Id like you to try. Well, Ill do what I can, said Miss Ophelia; and she approached her new subject very much as a person might be supposed to approach a black spider, supposing them to have benevolent designs toward it. Shes dreadfully dirty, and half naked, she said. Well, take her down stairs, and make some of them clean and clothe her up. Miss Ophelia carried her to the kitchen regions. Dont see what Masr St. Clare wants of nother nigger! said Dinah, surveying the new arrival with no friendly air. Wont have her around under my feet, I know! Pah! said Rosa and Jane, with supreme disgust; let her keep out of our way! What in the world Masr wanted another of these low niggers for, I cant see! You go long! No more nigger dan you be, Miss Rosa, said Dinah, who felt this last remark a reflection on herself. You seem to tink yourself white folks. You ant nerry one, black nor white, Id like to be one or turrer. Miss Ophelia saw that there was nobody in the camp that would undertake to oversee the cleansing and dressing of the new arrival; and so she was forced to do it herself, with some very ungracious and reluctant assistance from Jane. It is not for ears polite to hear the particulars of the first toilet of a neglected, abused child. In fact, in this world, multitudes must live and die in a state that it would be too great a shock to the nerves of their fellow-mortals even to hear described. Miss Ophelia had a good, strong, practical deal of resolution; and she went through all the disgusting details with heroic thoroughness, though, it must be confessed, with no very gracious air,for endurance was the utmost to which her principles could bring her. When she saw, on the back and shoulders of the child, great welts and calloused spots, ineffaceable marks of the system under which she had grown up thus far, her heart became pitiful within her. |
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