But, jesting apart, it is really the very pinnacle of absurdity, to see the rage to which dress is carried, by this class of persons in particular, when their style of living and rank in society are taken into consideration. Their mothers are of that class who have been already described when speaking of the negroes, but who, it must be mentioned, disdain that term. Others again are mongrels or mulattos; themselves the offspring of those illicit alliances for which the West Indies, in their days of darkness, have been so disgracefully noted. These mothers have had, in almost every instance, the entire management of their children. Perfectly uneducated themselves, they of course see no charms in knowledge, and except the simple act of being able to spell through an easy lesson, or scrawl their own names, these unfortunate girls are brought up with no higher ambition than the wearing smart clothes, utterly unbefitting their station, and spending their lives in brushing and dressing their hair, or rubbing their teeth with a roll of tobacco. While their mothers, who keep a small shop, sell in the market, or huckster about the town to gain a subsistence, think they have performed the part of a good parent, by procuring for their daughters clothing which every well-thinking person must mourn to see them arrayed in. Their houses are, in many instances, the domiciles I have also already described in the negro chapters, where, amid all these smart habiliments, the young persons whom you may see walking out with the air and dress of a _duchess_, herd together, eat the coarsest fare, perhaps never know the luxury of a table-cloth; and where the whole family, including male and female of every age, take their nightly repose together. Some of these young females are more industrious, and take in needlework of different kinds; but the amount of their earnings is lavished upon that all-absorbing object—dress. This, however, is the only species of work they will condescend to perform, for as to going out to service, they scorn the very idea.