Not only is this native dulness to be overcome, but _time_ for study is to be found--time enough for the faculties to unbend from the pressure of labor, and fix themselves upon the mental task. This is what few employers consider themselves able to afford. Once a week, in their opinion, is quite often enough for the slave to repeat his lesson; and through the week he may forget it. No wonder that both the indulgent master and the teacher--yes, and the learner, too, often become discouraged, and give up the task before the Word of God is unlocked to "the poor," for whom it was expressly written! I speak as one who has _felt_ these obstacles, having, with the approval of one of the class to whom I have alluded, taken charge of a Sunday school among his servants. More attentive and grateful pupils I never had, but it has pained my heart to feel the difficulty of leading them even to the _threshold_ of knowledge; and there leaveing them! In an adjoining household, however, it was still worse. George, a light-colored "boy" of twenty-five, the "factotum" of his mistress, was the husband of our cook, Letty. I had succeeded in taking Letty through several chapters in the New Testament, and this had aroused the ambition of George. "What do you think?" exclaimed one of the family to me, one morning; "Mrs. ---- has been _whipping_ George!" "Why! for what could that have been? I thought he was a favorite servant!" "For taking lessons of Letty in the spelling-book!" It was even so. The poor fellow wanted to learn to stammer in his Testament, and Letty, like any true-hearted wife, had given him the little assistance she could render. The whipping failed of its intended effect, however. Going one evening, at a late hour, into Letty's cabin, I found George seated by her on the floor, in the corner of their mud fire-place, poring intently over the forbidden spelling-book! He started up confused, but seeing who it was, he was reassured, and went on with his lesson! Whether George, Letty, or any of those who have gained the rudiments of science, will be _more happy_ in their servitude, is to me exceedingly doubtful. Thus far the severer classes of masters have the right; a slave, to be perfectly contented _as_ a slave, must be in total ignorance. But better, far better, greater suffering, if it bring enlargement of man's higher being, than that system that would _smother_ the soul in its bodily case. Let the slave have the key to the gate of Life Eternal, even if his pathway through this life must be more thickly sown with thorns. Let the opposing principles wage, until the right of _one_ is asserted. And, oh! above all pray for the day when these fetters shall be stricken from the souls God has created, wherewith to people, we firmly trust, no mean "tabernacle" of His New Jerusalem! [Illustration: (signature) Mary Irving] THIBODAUX, Nov. 25, 1853. FUN-JOTTINGS; OR, LAUGHS I HAVE TAKEN A PEN TO! BY N. P. WILLIS