(Now, David, mind, I’m not at home
In future to the Skinners!”)
A MODERATE INCOME.
BLACK, WHITE, AND BROWN.
ALL at once Miss Morbid left off sugar.
She did not resign it as some persons lay down their carriage, the full-bodied family-coach dwindling into a chariot, next into a fly, and then into a sedan-chair. She did not shade it off artistically, like certain household economists, from white to white-brown, brown, dark brown, and so on, to none at all.—She left it off, as one might leave off walking on the top of a house, or on a slide, or on a plank with a further end to it, that is to say, slapdash, all at once, without a moment’s warning. She gave it up, to speak appropriately, in the lump. She dropped it—as Corporal Trim let fall his hat,—dab. It vanished, as the French say, toot sweet. From the 30th of November, 1830, not an ounce of sugar, to use Miss Morbid’s own expression, ever “darkened her doors.”
The truth was she had been present the day before at an Anti-Slavery Meeting; and had listened to a lecturing Abolitionist, who had drawn her sweet tooth, root and branch, out of her head. Thenceforth sugar, or as she called it “shugger,” was no longer white, or brown, in her eyes, but red, blood-red—an abomination, to indulge in which would convert a professing Christian into a practical Cannibal. Accordingly she made a vow, under the influence of moist eyes and refined feelings, that the sanguinary article should never more enter her lips or her house; and this petty parody of the famous Berlin Decree against our Colonial produce was rigidly enforced. However others might countenance the practice of the Slave Owners by consuming “shugger,” she was resolved, for her own part, that “no suffering sable son of Africa should ever rise up against her out of a cup of Tea!”