knew in your respectable life--you cross, in time, the Border line
where the last drop of White blood ends and the full tide of Black
sets in. It would be easier to talk to a new made Duchess on the
spur of the moment than to the Borderline folk without violating
some of their conventions or hurting their feelings. The Black and
the White mix very quaintly in their ways. 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. She was not attractive; but she had her pride, and she
preferred being called "Miss Vezzis."