In front of these old huts was a spring, the water bubbling up and running through a dilapidated, moss-covered spout, into a tub half sunk in the earth, which in the daytime served as a drinking trough for the animals, and a bathing-pool for the babies. Brushwood and logs were lying around in all directions, and here and there a fire was burning, at which the negroes were cooking their supper. Dogs and a few stray babies were roaming about, seeming lonely for want of the pigs and chickens which kept company with them all day, but had now gone to rest. Boys and girls of larger growth were rollicking and careering over the place, dancing and singing and entertaining themselves and the whole settlement with their jollities and noise. Is it surprising, we must stop to ask, that the colored people are a degraded class, when we consider the way in which the children live from their very infancy. No work for them to do, nothing to learn, nobody to care for them,--they are just left to grow and fatten like swine, till they are in condition to be sold or to be broken in to their tasks in the field. Utterly neglected, they contract, of necessity, lazy and vicious habits, and it is no wonder they have to be whipped and broken in to work as animals to the yoke or harness; and no wonder that under such treatment for successive generations, the race should become so reduced in mental and moral ability, as to be thought by many incapable of ever reclaiming a position among the enlightened nations of the earth. Oh, what a weight of guilt have the people of our country incurred in allowing four millions of those poor people to be so trodden down in the very midst of us! When the children reached home again they found Mammy Grace's cabin quite full of men and women, shouting, singing, and talking in a way quite unintelligible to our little stranger. After she had dropped upon her cot for the night, she lifted her head and ventured to ask what those people had been about. "Don' ye know, chile? We's had a praisin'-meetin'. We has 'em ebery week, one week it's here, and one week it's ober to General Doolittle's, ober de hill yonder. Ef ye's a good chile, honey, ye shall go wid yer old mammy some time, ye shall." "What do you do?" asked Tidy. "We praises, chile,--praises de Lord, and den we prays too." "What's that?" "Laws, chile, ye don't know noffin. Whar's ye been fotched up all yer days? Why, when we wants any ting we can't git oursef, nohow, we ask de Lord to gib it to us--dat's what it is." That first day and evening in Tidy's new home was a memorable day in her experience. It seemed as if she had been lifted up two or three degrees in existence, so much had she heard and learned. She had enough to think about as she lay down to rest, for the first time away from Miss Matilda's sheltering presence. CHAPTER VIII. PRAYER.