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less painful. Although his words were unintelligible, I knew, by his gestures, that he was beseeching me to apadrinhar, or ask his pardon.

'Apadrinhar a scoundrel like you?' interrupted the fazendeiro. Where are your legs, you old sot? Must I whip your skin off to teach you to move? Leave instantly, or I will flay you alive! And remember, that if this gentleman had not asked your pardon, within an hour the vultures would have been picking your bones!'

'Si, Senhor,' ejaculated the trembling wretch; and getting upon his feet, and recovering his breath, he set off with all the speed that his fear of becoming food for vultures could give him.

'You see, senhor,. said my host, with an air of triumph, 'how my slaves fear me. I am none the harsher for that, but I want them to obey me.'

[The succeeding sketch of Mrs. Flinders's domestic aggravations, which unexpectedly fell into my hands in a way immaterial to relate, I at first proposed to correct and revise so as to remove Its more glaring errors in spelling and grammatical construction; but have finally decided that her coarse idioms and incorrect diction furnish a more appropriate garb for her homely experiences than the most delicate and refined phraseology could do. With this hint, I hereby submit the following.]

To begin at the beginnin', I might as well tell you who I be, as 't an't noways likely you' ll ever git the information no other way. I was brung up out in the country, purty fur out, too, in pint of fact. Novy Scoshy was the native shore where I fust see the light. I can't brag much on the score of learnin', for there was sech a slew of us that mother let us run wild till we was big enough to help her, and then she taught us to bake, and brew, and spin, and stew, as every decent gal ought that ever calcilates to rule a roost of her own. Book learnin' is what I never did take to, but the common-sense kind of learnin', that a body picks up most anyhow, always come purty handy to me; not a gal in town could git ahead of me at a quiltin'-party, an apple-parin', or a huskin'-bee—all Yankee inventions, brung among us by them Flinders's younkstirs, that come from Biddyferd, staid jest long enough to git growed up, an' then cut sticks for parts unknown, leavin' their poor mother to fret her heart into shoe-strings about them at her laysure. Wal, I grew up to be a strong, bucksum lass of twenty—spiteful folks said I'd been up to twenty-five an' bad to turn round an' come down a step a year to reach that ago; but I scorn to mention sech an imperdent insinnyvation—as ready with my tongue as with my hand, and whoever undertook to put upon me got as good as they sent, if not the wust on 't—not that I was very sharp-spoken commonly, only if any body begun to sarce me I liked to show that I could give tit for tat with the best on 'em.

One day, when I'd got the churnin' done, the cheese-curd sot, an' all the chores out of the way, I jest put on my sun-bonnit an' run over to the Widder Flinders's, and there in her kitching corner sot a great spindle-shanked, lantern-jawed chap, that up an' made a bow, a sort of a snappin' jerk of the head, sech as a dancin' jack hung on wires would be apt to acknowledge a sallytation with, when the widder introduced him as Capting Gehossyfat Flinders, a neffew jest from sea.