The woman, without the least hesitation, turned her back towards me. Then she gathered all her clothes up under her arms, exposing the whole lower part of her person. (She was wearing no drawers.)

It was a sight! All women of Negro blood have, naturally, big bottoms, and, since Mary was rather stout, her bottom was enormous, the plump hemispheres of flesh swelling out and sweeping in great curves to the massive thighs and sturdy legs cased in tight, white cotton stockings. Her skin was smooth and of a light brown tint, and I noticed at once that both the fat cheeks of her bottom as well as the upper part of her thighs were marked with long, fine, white lines where the skin had been cut by the lash.

She seemed to like showing her opulent charms, for she was in no hurry to drop her petticoats, but stood looking over her shoulder at me with a complacent smile on her face till her mistress said: That will do, Mary. She then let her clothes fall and left the room smiling.

There, said Dolly, you have seen the marks on her bottom, and I can tell you that her back is just as much marked. Moreover, she was seduced, or, to speak more correctly, she had to give herself up to her master’s eldest son when she was only fifteen years old. She afterwards passed through the hands of the two younger sons; but the fact of her being the plaything of the three young men did not save her bottom from being blistered by the paddle or striped with the switch whenever she committed an offense of any sort. She has told me that she sometimes had to go to the room of one or another of the young masters while her bottom was bleeding from a whipping. I have another woman about thirty-five years of age in my service as cook; she comes from South Carolina, and her body is even more scarred than Mary’s with the marks of the whip.