Here I am safe and sound--well in body, and in fine voice for my calling--though thousands and thousands of miles, I may say, from the old living Threap-Cum-Toddle. Little did I think to be ever giving out the Psalms across the Atlantic, or to be walking in the streets of Barbadoes, surrounded by Blackamoors, big and little; some crying after me, “There him go--look at Massa Amen!” Poor African wretches! I do hope, by my Lord Bishop’s assistance, to instruct many of them, and to teach them to have more respect for ecclesiastic dignitaries. Through a ludicrous clerical mischance, not fit for me to mention, we have preached but once since our arrival. Oh! Jedidiah, how different from the row of comely, sleek, and ruddy plain English faces, that used to confront me in the Churchwarden’s pew, at the old service in Hants,--Mr. Perryman’s clean, shining, bald head; Mr. Truman’s respectable powdered, and Mr. Cutlet’s comely and well-combed caxon!--Here, such a set of grinning sooty faces, that if I had been in any other place, I might have fancied myself at a meeting of Master Chimney-sweeps on May-Day. You know, Jedidiah, how strange thoughts and things will haunt the mind, in spite of one’s self, at times the least appropriate:--the line that follows “The rose is red, the violet’s blue,” in the old Valentine, I am ashamed to say, came across me I know not how often. Then after service, no sitting on a tombstone for a cheerful bit of chat with a neighbour--no invitation to dinner from the worshipful Churchwardens. The jabber of these Niggers is so outlandish or unintelligible, I can hardly say I am on speaking terms with any of our parishioners, except Mr. Pompey, the Governor’s black, whose trips to England have made his English not quite so full of Greek as the others. There is one thing, however, that is so great a disappointment of my hopes and enjoyments, that I think, if I had foreseen it, I should not have come out even at the Bishop’s request. The song in the play-book says, you know, “While all Barbadoes bells do ring!”--but alas, Jedidiah, there is not a ring of bells in the whole island!--You who remember my fondness for that melodious pastime, indeed I may say my passion, for a Grandsire Peel of Triple Bob-Majors truly pulled, and the changes called by myself, as when I belonged to the Great Tom Society of Hampshire Youths,--may conceive my regret that, instead of coming here, I did not go out to Swan River--I am told they have a Peel there. [Illustration: BLACK BARBERISM.]