144 TROPIC DAYS 



she was white. Over her inheritance, the cruellest which 

 fortune could bestow, she was shudderingly horrified. 

 Not all the longings of an untainted mind could make 

 her skin less tawny. Its stain was too deep to be 

 blanched by the most fervent of prayers. Her outlook 

 on life, her intensest wishes, were those of a white girl 

 of more than decent perceptions of actual refinement, 

 for they tended to the avoidance of everything un- 

 pleasant and unsightly. In other respects, too, she was 

 an absolute variant from the type, for her sensitiveness 

 to the pain of others and of the lower animals amounted 

 almost to a mania; for though she had a girlish horror 

 of blood, her eagerness to solace sufferings made her so 

 courageous that she became most apt and prompt in the 

 administration of first aid. Her big, startled eyes 

 showed the sincerity of her feelings, while her firm, 

 slender fingers deftly applied bandages as she spoke in 

 soothing tones. 



The soul of a white damsel was in habitation of the 

 body of one whose parents had been black and utterly 

 degraded. In the days of old evil spirits were believed 

 to be capable of taking spiteful possession of the bodies 

 of the weak to work, in unseemlinesses and indecencies, 

 for the mischief of the soul. Here was a good and gentle 

 spirit which strove undemonstratively for the salvation 

 of a being the circumstances of whose birth bordered 

 on the infernal. It was as if the baths of infancy had 

 purified the soul, while the permanence and perversity 

 of blood triumphed in feature and complexion. 



While the other children of the house deserved and 

 obtained love and affection in full measure, towards 

 Soosie were exhibited similar sentiments, with, perhaps, 

 more consideration, for was it not plain that her life was 

 a continual conflict a conflict between body and soul a 

 body self-abhorred, a soul which needed no purification? 



