Sometimes the White shows in spurts
of fierce, childish pride--which is Pride of Race run crooked--and sometimes
the Black in still fiercer abasement and humility, half heathenish customs and
strange, unaccountable impulses to crime. One of these days, this people--
understand they are far lower than the class whence Derozio, the man who
imitated Byron, sprung--will turn out a writer or a poet; and then we shall
know how they live and what they feel. In the meantime, any stories about them
cannot be absolutely correct in fact or inference.
Miss Vezzis came from across the Borderline to look after some children who
belonged to a lady until a regularly ordained nurse could come out. The lady
said Miss Vezzis was a bad, dirty nurse and inattentive. It never struck her
that Miss Vezzis had her own life to lead and her own affairs to worry over,
and that these affairs were the most important things in the world to Miss
Vezzis.
Very few mistresses admit this sort of reasoning. Miss Vezzis was as black as
a boot, and to our standard of taste, hideously ugly.
She wore cotton-print gowns and bulged shoes; and when she lost her temper
with the children, she abused them in the language of the Borderline--which is
part English, part Portuguese, and part Native.
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