But I now entered on my fifteenth year - a sad epoch in the life of a slave girl. My master began to whisper foul words in my ear. Young as I was, I could not remain ignorant of their import

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.

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.

No pen can give an adequate description of the all-pervading corruption produced by slavery.

Cruelty is contagious in uncivilized communities.

The slave girl is reared in an atmosphere of licentiousness and fear.

The slave child had no thought for the morrow; but there came that blight, which too surely waits on every human being born to be a chattel.