The officers having left the school room, I politely escorted them down stairs, proffering them seats until I made some alterations in my dress before I accompanied them to the Mayor’s office. I immediately returned to the school room, and found the children in a dreadful state of excitement. I must here inform my readers that all persons of color in the Southern, or Slave States, have a dreadful horror of constables, for it is these officers to whom is entrusted the execution of their punishment for all offences. After I had again brought the children to order, I was ready to accompany the officers. I arranged the children in couples and gave them up to the officers, and we all started for the Mayor’s office, my daughter and myself walking at a little distance in the rear. Will my readers please imagine, for an instant, a crowd of little children, walking two and two, preceded and followed by two stout men, each with a great club in his hands? It reminded me of a flock of little lambs going to the slaughter. We soon reached the Mayor’s Court, and were seated until his honor was ready for an examination. Many spectators were present to witness the wonderful sight of a sudden descent upon a negro school. I had a casual acquaintance with his honor, Mayor Stubbs, as I had been before reported to him for an act of humanity to a helpless and worthy little woman and her two infant children. I had been made acquainted with her sufferings and miserable situation, and, from time to time, for two years, I had bestowed upon her many acts of kindness and sympathy, as cordially as though she had been my own sister. She had a drunken and worthless husband, who, when in a state of inebriation, was very violent and brutal to her, and who would often leave her for weeks at a time, without a cent, and almost in a state of starvation. At those emergencies she would subsist solely on what she received from my bounty. Finally, her young child, about one year old, was taken very ill. She was a kind and affectionate mother, and grieved much for her little boy. I endeavored to obtain assistance for her in the humane and benevolent city of Norfolk, but in vain. I alone clung to her to the last. She resided at some distance from my house. Her child lay for some weeks in a very critical condition, and I could not do as much for her as I desired to do. At this time her husband was away on one of his drunken carousals in the city, and not even the sufferings of his dying child could soften his brutal heart. I finally concluded to take her and her children into my own house, and made the proposition to her, which she received with much gratitude, and readily assented to. By my advice she soon had her little chattels gathered together and sent them to an auctioneer. The room was soon emptied, and, with her two sick children, she hastened to my house, where, with our united attentions, we succeeded in raising the little sufferer to health. The facts in