Minnies Sacrifice | Page 5

on the hunt for some new excitement, her father passed down Tremont St., and saw advertised, in large letters, on the entrance to Tremont Temple, "Anti Slavery Meeting;" and never having been in such a place before he entered, impelled by a natural curiosity to hear what could be said against a system in which he had been involved from his earliest recollections, without taking the pains to examine it.
The first speaker was a colored man. This rather surprised him. He had been accustomed to colored men all the days of his life; and as such, he had known some of them to be intelligent, shrewd, and wide awake; but this was a new experience. The man had been a slave, and recounted in burning words the wrongs which had been heaped upon him. He told that he had been a husband and a father: that his wife had possessed (for a slave) the "fatal gift of beauty;" that a trader, from whose presence her soul had recoiled with loathing, had marked her as his prey. Then he told how he had knelt at his master's feet, and implored him not to sell her, but it was all in vain. The trader was rich in sin-cursed gold; and he was poor and weak. He next attempted to describe his feelings when he saw his wife and children standing on the auction block; and heard the coarse jests of the spectators, and the fierce competition of the bidders.
The speaker made a deep impression upon the minds of the audience; and even Le Croix, who had been accustomed to slavery all his life, felt a sense of guilt passing over him for his complicity in the system; whilst Camilla grew red and pale by turns, and clutching her little hands nervously together, said, "Father, let us go home."
Le Croix saw the deep emotion on his daughter's face, and the nervous twitchings of her lips, and regretted that he had introduced her to such an exciting scene.
When they were seated in their private parlor, Le Croix said: "Birdie, I am sorry that we attended that meeting this morning. I didn't believe a word that nigger said; and yet these people all drank it down as if every word were gospel truth. They are a set of fanatics, calculated to keep the nation in hot water. I hope that you will never enter such a place again. Did you believe one word that negro said?"
"Why, yes, Pa, I did, because our Isaac used to tell me just such a story as that. If I had shut my eyes, I could have imagined that it was Isaac telling his story."
"Isaac! What business had Isaac telling you any such stories?"
"Oh, Pa, don't get angry with Isaac. It wasn't his fault; it was mine.
"You know when you brought him home to drive the carriage, he used to look so sorrowful, and I said to him one day, Isaac, what makes you so sad? Why don't you laugh and talk, like Jerry and Sam?
"And he said, 'Oh Missus, I can't! Ise got a mighty heap of trouble on my mind.' And he looked so down-hearted when he said this, I wanted to know what was the matter; but he said, 'It won't do, for a little lady like you to know the troubles of we poor creatures,' but one day, when Sam came home from New Orleans he brought him a letter from his wife, and he really seemed to be overjoyed, and he kissed the letter, and put it in his bosom, and I never saw him look half so happy before. So the next day when I asked him to get the pony ready, he asked me if I wouldn't read it for him. He said he had been trying to make it out, but somehow he could not get the hang of the words, and so I sat down and read it to him. Then he told me about his wife, how beautiful she was; and how a trader, a real mean man, wanted to buy her, and that he had begged his master not to sell her; but it was no use. She had to go; but he was glad of one thing; the trader was dead, and his wife had got a place in the city with a very nice lady, and he hoped to see her when he went to New Orleans. Pa, I wonder how slavery came to be. I should hate to belong to anybody, wouldn't you, Pa?"
"Why, yes, darling, but then the negroes are contented, and wouldn't take their freedom, if you would give it to them."
"I don't know about that, Pa; there was Mr. Le Grange's Peter. Mr. Le Grange used to dress him so fine and treat