Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl | Page 8

the next morning; and often does she wish that
she and they might die before the day dawns. She may be an ignorant
creature, degraded by the system that has brutalized her from childhood;
but she has a mother's instincts, and is capable of feeling a mother's
agonies.
On one of these sale days, I saw a mother lead seven children to the
auction-block. She knew that some of them would be taken from her;
but they took all. The children were sold to a slave-trader, and their
mother was brought by a man in her own town. Before night her
children were all far away. She begged the trader to tell her where he
intended to take them; this he refused to do. How could he, when he
knew he would sell them, one by one, wherever he could command the
highest price? I met that mother in the street, and her wild, haggard face
lives to-day in my mind. She wrung her hands in anguish, and
exclaimed, "Gone! All gone! Why _don't_ God kill me?" I had no
words wherewith to comfort her. Instances of this kind are of daily, yea,

of hourly occurrence.
Slaveholders have a method, peculiar to their institution, of getting rid
of old slaves, whose lives have been worn out in their service. I knew
an old woman, who for seventy years faithfully served her master. She
had become almost helpless, from hard labor and disease. Her owners
moved to Alabama, and the old black woman was left to be sold to any
body who would give twenty dollars for her.

IV. The Slave Who Dared To Feel Like A Man.
Two years had passed since I entered Dr. Flint's family, and those years
had brought much of the knowledge that comes from experience,
though they had afforded little opportunity for any other kinds of
knowledge.
My grandmother had, as much as possible, been a mother to her orphan
grandchildren. By perseverance and unwearied industry, she was now
mistress of a snug little home, surrounded with the necessaries of life.
She would have been happy could her children have shared them with
her. There remained but three children and two grandchildren, all
slaves. Most earnestly did she strive to make us feel that it was the will
of God: that He had seen fit to place us under such circumstances; and
though it seemed hard, we ought to pray for contentment.
It was a beautiful faith, coming from a mother who could not call her
children her own. But I, and Benjamin, her youngest boy, condemned it.
We reasoned that it was much more the will of God that we should be
situated as she was. We longed for a home like hers. There we always
found sweet balsam for our troubles. She was so loving, so
sympathizing! She always met us with a smile, and listened with
patience to all our sorrows. She spoke so hopefully, that unconsciously
the clouds gave place to sunshine. There was a grand big oven there,
too, that baked bread and nice things for the town, and we knew there
was always a choice bit in store for us.
But, alas! Even the charms of the old oven failed to reconcile us to our
hard lot. Benjamin was now a tall, handsome lad, strongly and
gracefully made, and with a spirit too bold and daring for a slave. My
brother William, now twelve years old, had the same aversion to the
word master that he had when he was an urchin of seven years. I was
his confidant. He came to me with all his troubles. I remember one

instance in particular. It was on a lovely spring morning, and when I
marked the sunlight dancing here and there, its beauty seemed to mock
my sadness. For my master, whose restless, craving, vicious nature
roved about day and night, seeking whom to devour, had just left me,
with stinging, scorching words; words that scathed ear and brain like
fire. O, how I despised him! I thought how glad I should be, if some
day when he walked the earth, it would open and swallow him up, and
disencumber the world of a plague.
When he told me that I was made for his use, made to obey his
command in every thing; that I was nothing but a slave, whose will
must and should surrender to his, never before had my puny arm felt
half so strong.
So deeply was I absorbed in painful reflections afterwards, that I
neither saw nor heard the entrance of any one, till the voice of William
sounded close beside me. "Linda," said he, "what makes you look so
sad? I love you. O, Linda, isn't this a bad world? Every body seems so