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344 CALLING A SPADE A SPADE.
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
Plaint Speaking Is Both A Difficult And ...
Host of otlier refined and thoughtful Americans are familiar contributorsappeared a story by Mrs . Lydia Maria Childwhose name
, , stands as high as that of . ( Mary Howitt in England ; a name sans peur et sans reproche _, and which one might have thought would
suffice to carry any work of fiction which such a lady was likely to pen . This tale was reprinted in two successive numbers of the
_English Woman ' s _JouitiTAii , and lost us twelve subscribers ! They were so " shocked" at being told that the heroinea quadroon
, slave in New Orleans , could not be legally married to her master * and that she was sold by accident into the power of a wicked man ,
and with the greatest difficulty rescued by " Alfred , " that not even the consoling fact of her being carried off to New York , and there
wedded fast and tight by her repentant Alfred , who forsakes his worldly goods that he may do her justice , sufficed to do away with
the fatal impression that our Journal was shaky in its principles . Now what Mrs . Child throws into the form of a mild and well
worded fiction , Mrs . Kemble records with the simplicity of a woman writing to a female friend , Miss Elizabeth Sedgwick ; and
inasmuch as the heroines of her " o ' er true tale " are not beautiful , accomplishedhalf-blooded _quadroonsbut sad " darkies" of the
lowest menial , class , they were so uncommonl , y devoid of any sense of refinement and civilization as to be afflicted with painful diseases
from overwork in the fields , and to have also an extraordinary trick of pouring into the astounded ears of " missis , " experiences
at which the English matron cried like a baby . The plantation to which Mrs . Kemble accompanied her husband
in the winter of 1838-9 , was near Darien , in Georgia , at the mouth of the River Altamaha . It was a swampy estatedevoted to the
, cultivation of rice , and peopled by slaves , who were represented as rather better off than those on neighbouring plantations ; and
where the mistress , " cut off from all the usual resources and amusements of civilized existence , " kept for Miss Elizabeth
Sedgwick ' s benefit such a diary as Monk Lewis wrote during his visit to his "West India plantations . " I wish , " she adds , " I had any
prospect of rendering * my diary as interesting and amusing to you as his was to me . " But though her Journal can hardly be called
amusing , it strikes us as one of the most interesting ever written ; and its publication is justified by the vital importance of the
subject matter at this moment , when the affairs of the South are on every lipand when the gallantry of their struggle for territorial
independence , is blinding the English people to the debased state of domestic life among the populations of the Slave States .
When Mrs . Kemble found herself among her husband ' s people , located in their four settlements , or villages , consisting of from ten
to twenty houses , to each of which was annexed a cook's shop with capacious caldrons , with the oldest wife of the settlement for
officiating priestess , she tried to work among them like any sensible
344 Calling A Spade A Spade.
344 CALLING A SPADE A SPADE .
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Citation
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English Woman’s Journal (1858-1864), July 1, 1863, page 344, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/ewj/issues/ewj_01071863/page/56/
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