ADVERTISEMENT.
I have but a single word to deliver in regard to this little
volume. I am conscious—in one at least of the stories in the
ensuing collection,—that entitled “Caloya, or the Loves of
the Driver,”—of a certain Flemish freedom of touch which, in
the minds of very fastidious persons, may subject me to a certain
degree of censure. The materials are coarse in character,
delineating the negro slave in his moments of excess, and
the Indian in his condition of deepest degradation. It has
not been without a purpose that I have so designed it, since,
I am free to believe that, I have succeeded in showing how
happily Virtue can be seen to triumph even in the worst estates,
and with what loveliness of aspect Purity can make
her progress, like the Lady in Milton's Comus, even through
the foul rabble of lewd spirits that hang about her path. I
flatter myself that, in this little story, I have wrought out
the most healthful and encouraging results of virtue, even
from an atmosphere wholly vicious and impure; and that
the Indian woman, Caloya, is, in moral respects, such a being
as might serve for the model of the purest lady in the land.
