Cruelty is contagious in uncivilized communities.

DURING the first years of my service in Dr. Flint's family, I was accustomed to share some indulgences with the children of my mistress

There is a great difference between Christianity and religion at the south. If a man goes to the communion table, and pays money into the treasury of the church, no matter if it be the price of blood, he is called religious.

I was ordered to go for flowers, that my mistress's house might be decorated for an evening party. I spent the day gathering flowers and weaving them into festoons, while the dead body of my father was lying within a mile of me. What cared my owners for that? he was merely a piece of property. Moreover, they thought he had spoiled his children, by teaching them to feel that they were human beings. This was blasphemous doctrine for a slave to teach; presumptuous in him, and dangerous to the masters.

When I was six years old, my mother died; and then, for the first time, I learned, by the talk around me, that I was a slave.

When my babe was born, they said it was premature. It weighed only four pounds; but God let it live.

Always it gave me a pang that my children had no lawful claim to a name.