Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. III.djvu/50

Rh perceiving the satire of the domestic institution, which such praise implies.

Thus, from childhood upwards, is the natural sense of right, and the pure glance of youth, falsified by the institution of slavery.

And it does not operate injuriously merely upon the upright mind of the child, so that it does not perceive the lie, but also upon its heart and its character. A noble lady of New Orleans, who has resided there some years, told me a great deal of the unhappy effects of slavery upon the education of the child, and its influence in making the young disposition stubborn and intractable. The child, surrounded by slaves from the cradle, accustoms himself to command them, to have all his caprices gratified, or to see the refusal punished, often with cruelty. Hence results that violence of temper, and those ferocious and bloody scenes which are of such frequent occurrence in the Slave States. And how can it be otherwise? Even I have seen a few examples of the behaviour of children to slaves, which has shown how much this institution tends to develop the naturally despotic disposition of the child.

I visited a school for young girls, where I could not but admire their capacity for making intellectual salto mortales.

During the examination which the superintendent caused them to pass through, and which they passed through with remarkable ability, the questions were proposed something in this style:— “What is snow? How large is the standing army of the Emperor of Russia? Where is Lapland? Who was Napoleon? What is salt-petre? How far is the earth from the sun? When did Shakspeare live? In what year did Washington die? What is the amount of the population of France? What is the moon?” and so on.

The girls answered in chorus, very quickly, and for the most part quite correctly. The whole examination was a