habiliments of coarse cotton and scarlet flannel which form a baby's
layette here, and of which I have run up some scores; but my present task
was far more difficult. Chloe was an ordinary mortal negress enough, but
Diana might have been the Huntress of the Woods herself, done into the
African type. Tall, large, straight, well-made, profoundly serious, she
stood like a bronze statue, while I, mounted on a stool, (the only way in
which I could attain to the noble shoulders and bust of my lay figure),
pinned and measured, and cut and shaped, under the superintendence of
M----, and had the satisfaction of seeing the fine proportions of my black
goddess quite becomingly clothed in a high tight fitting body of the
gayest chintz, which she really contrived to put together quite
creditably.

[Footnote 1: Some of our great English ladies are, I know, exquisite
needlewomen; but I do not think, in spite of these exceptional examples,
that young English ladies of the higher classes are much skilled in this
respect at the present day; and as for the democratic daughters of
America, who for many reasons might be supposed likely to be well up in
such housewifely lore, they are for the most part so ignorant of it that I
have heard the most eloquent preacher of the city of New York advert to
their incapacity in this respect, as an impediment to their assistance of
the poor; and ascribe to the fact that the daughters of his own
parishioners did not know how to sew, the impossibility of their giving
the most valuable species of help to the women of the needier classes,
whose condition could hardly be more effectually improved than by
acquiring such useful knowledge. I have known young American school girls,
duly instructed in the nature of the parallaxes of the stars, but, as a
rule, they do not know how to darn their stockings. Les Dames du Sacré
Coeur do better for their high-born and well-bred pupils than this.]