Page:The Present State of Peru.djvu/293

Rh should no longer be under the tutelage of the negress, the very reverse happens. Maria looks to the little girl, and conducts her to the kitchen, to the wash-house, to the street, to the flesh-market, and I know not whither. If my impatience tempts me to rebuke her on this subject, I am sure to be the sufferer. Sometimes I endeavour very seriously to persuade, that this want of restraint on the part of the nurses is apt to be fatal to the innocence of the children; that the latter, mixing exclusively with persons of that cast, familiarize themselves with their coarse manners, and learn and adopt all the vulgarities which are practised among slaves: and that a prudent and respectable mother ought not to encourage, either by her counsels, or by her practical example, the indecent dances which they teach the little girls; but should prohibit them with all possible rigour. listens to my discourse with much serenity, and then observes: "such is the practice."

What I am about to relate is still more pleasant. Some days ago a patrol lodged in the jail a negro, named John, who had been surprized in the act of gaming at an unseasonable hour of the night. came to me to request of me to see the judge before whom the cause of the imprisonment of the negro was to be tried, to the end that he might be more readily liberated. It struck me that it would be somewhat indecent to appear as the patron of a nocturnal gambler; but I went notwithstanding. I learned that the said John, besides being addicted to the above vice, was an accomplished thief, a picaroon connected with all the assassins who infest the environs of this capital. On procuring this