To tell the truth, her own temper soured a little under the prohibition. She could not persuade the sugar-eaters that they were Vampyres;--instead of practising, or even admiring her self-denial, they laughed at it; and one wicked wag even compared her, in allusion to her acerbity and her privation, to a crab without _the nippers_. She persevered notwithstanding in her system; and to the constancy of a martyr added something of the wilfulness of a bigot:--indeed, it was hinted by patrons and patronesses of white charities, that European objects had not their _fair_ share in her benevolence. She was pre-eminently the friend of the blacks. Howbeit, for all her sacrifices, not a lash was averted from their sable backs. She had raised discontent in the kitchen, she had disgusted her acquaintance, sickened her friends, and given her own dear little nephews the stomach-ache, without saving Quashy from one cut of the driver’s whip, or diverting a single kick from the shins of Sambo. Her grocer complained loudly of being called a dealer in human gore, yet not one hogshead the less was imported from the Plantations. By an error common to all her class she mistook a negative for a positive principle; and persuaded herself that by _not_ preserving damsons, she preserved the Niggers; that by _not_ sweetening her own cup, she was dulcifying the lot of all her sable brethren in bondage. She persevered accordingly in setting her face against sugar instead of slavery; against the plant instead of the planter; and had actually abstained for six months from the forbidden article, when a circumstance occurred that roused her sympathies into more active exertions. It pleased an American lady to import with her a black female servant, whom she rather abruptly dismissed, on her arrival in England. The case was considered by the Hampshire Telegraph of that day, as one of GREAT HARDSHIP; the paragraph went the round of the papers and in due time attracted the notice of Miss Morbid. It was precisely addressed to her sensibilities, and there was a “Try Warren” tone about it that proved irresistible. She read--and wrote--and in the course of one little week, her domestic establishment was maliciously but truly described as consisting of “two white Slaves and a black Companion.”