The school seemed good enough in all ways.

A senior class of young men--including one who had had his head nearly cut off last year by misapplication of that formidable weapon the cutlass, which every coloured man and woman carries in the West Indies--could read pretty well; and the smaller children-- with as much clothing on as they could be persuaded to wear--were a sight pleasant to see.

Among them, by the by, was a little lady who excited my astonishment.

She was, I was told, twelve years old.

She sat summing away on her slate, bedizened out in gauze petticoat, velvet jacket--between which and the petticoat, of course, the waist showed just as nature had made it--gauze veil, bangles, necklace, nose-jewel; for she was a married woman, and her Papa (Anglice, husband) wished her to look her best on so important an occasion.
This over-early marriage among the Coolies is a very serious evil, but one which they have brought with them from their own land.