obedience to her directions; and for this reason, no one had found it necessary to interfere in their management.
Pride was a large ingredient in Phillis's composition. Although her husband presented one of the blackest visages the sun ever shone upon, Phillis appeared to hold in small esteem the ordinary servants on the plantation. She was constantly chiding her children for using their expressions, and tried to keep them in the house with white people as much as possible, that they might acquire good manners. It was quite a grief to her that Bacchus had not a more genteel dialect than the one he used. She had a great deal of family pride; there was a difference in her mind between family servants and those employed in field labor. For "the quality" she had the highest respect; for "poor white people" only a feeling of pity. She had some noble qualities, and some great weaknesses; but as a slave! we present her to the reader, and she must be viewed as such.
Miss Janet was, in her eyes, perfection. Her children were all the better for her kind instructions. Her youngest child, Lydia, a girl of six or seven years old, followed the old lady everywhere, carrying her key and knitting-basket, looking for her spectacles, and maintaining short conversations in a confidential tone.
One of Phillis's chiefest virtues was, that she had been able to bring Bacchus into subjection, with the exception of his love for an occasional spree. Spoiled by an indulgent master, his conceit and wilfulness had made him unpopular with the servants, though his high tone of speaking, and a certain pretension in his manner and dress, was not without its effect. He was a sort of patriarch among waiters and carriage-drivers; could tell anecdotes of dinners where Washington was a guest; and had been familiar with certain titled people from abroad, whose shoes he had had the honor of polishing. The only person in whose presence he restrained his braggadocio style was Phillis.
