Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. I.djvu/310

 warped his sense of truth, and has degraded his moral nature.

The position and the treatment of the blacks, however, really improve from year to year. The whites, nevertheless, do not seem to advance in enlightenment. But—I will see and hear more before I condemn them. Perhaps the lover of darkness has established himself principally in Charleston. “Charleston is an owl's nest!” said a witty Carolina lady to me one day.

I must now tell you something about the home in which I am, and in which I find myself so well off, and so happy, that I would not wish for a better. The house with its noble garden stands alone in one of the most rural streets of the city, Lynch-street, and has on one side a free view of the country and the river, so that it enjoys the most delicious air—the freshest breezes. Lovely sprays of white roses, and of the scarlet honeysuckle, fling themselves over the piazza, and form the most exquisite verandah. Here I often walk, especially in the early morning and in the evening, inhaling the delicious air, and looking abroad over the country. My room, my pretty airy room, is in the upper story. The principal apartments which are on the first story open upon the piazza, where people assemble or walk about in the evening, when there is generally company.

You are a little acquainted with Mrs. W. H. already, but no one can rightly know her, or value her, until they have seen her in daily life, within her own home. She is there more like a Swedish lady than any woman I have met with in this country, for she has that quiet, attentive, affectionate, motherly demeanour; always finding something to do, and not being above doing it with her own hands. (In the slave states people commonly consider coarse work as somewhat derogatory, and leave it to be done by slaves.) Thus I see her quietly busied from morning till evening; now with the children, now with