It will do me no credit, I fear, with our active Abolitionists, to confess, that the above little incident set me seriously thinking, for the first time, on the condition of the Negro Apprentices. In addition to my dread of becoming a _sidesman_--and there is a spirit abroad which can convert even a black suit into a party-coloured one--I am too apt to take matters upon trust, and to suppose that the name stands for the thing. Thus, in my simple belief, the outward-bound and the homeward-bound apprentices, conformed to the same or nearly the same articles; and if I thought at all of the sable ones, it was as walking abroad on Sundays, drest in all their best, only with Phœbe or Miss Diana, instead of “Sally in our Alley.” A common sense of the eternal principles of justice helped, beside, to mislead me; for who, with a drachm of philosophy, or a scruple of Christianity, could suppose, that whilst the accidents of colour are overlooked in a good horse, the moral qualities of a human being were weighed down by such skin-deep casualties as occur every day in a baker’s oven? The scene in the Strand, however, aroused certain misgivings; and for the mere repose of my mind, it became necessary to procure further information, in order to come to a settled opinion on the subject. To this end, it was desirable to obtain the sentiments of a Black Apprentice, or at least of a Black, and of an Apprentice, and fortune favoured me in the search. Having delivered my instructions to the tradesman, it occurred to me to pay an overdue visit to a decayed kinswoman in the same neighbourhood, and in whose family affairs I took a friendly interest. She happened to be at home; and after a preliminary conversation on the weather, and Mr. Murphy, and the current news of the day, the discourse turned on her son Richard, whom she had recently articled to an architect; she had doubts, she said, of his being exactly comfortable in his situation, but it was no fault of hers, as he had been placed in it at his own urgent instances, in proof whereof she handed to me the following letter:-- MY DEAR MOTHER,