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Show 138 THE MONTHLY OFFERING. country-my country is a great way from here."-." And why did your master sell you?" I asked-" Ah,'' smd she, "rny master, I had no master. They stole me away."-! could ask no more, but she went on.. "Yes, bless you, I wasfrec·horn and lived with my mother; but hired myself out by the week to a man by the name: of---. He kept house by himself,and was thought to be "good man, and was a clerk in the Baptist Church. He had told me a great many times, if I would give up my time to him and be a slave, he would take good care of me, and I should be well off-But no! 1 always said, that I would never do. God made me free as well as him. I used every Saturday night, to go home, to spend Sunday with my mother. One Monday morning, as I came back as usual to go to my work, and had just got inside the palings, there came three men upon me from the house. One had a club, another a rope, and the other a gun, pointing it at me, and telling me to take the road and that if I refused to do as they told me, they would shoot me down. I was taken and put into a drove with sixty or seventy others, and along with us was a large wagon filled with negro cl:lildren. These poor creatures were brought from different plantations and,different states, by the speculator, for a Southern market. I can no longer give you her words; my feelings were too much agitated to allow me to recollect them,-but the substance of her story is too deeply engraven on my memory ever to be effaced. Having travelled the whole distance of several hundred miles on foot, they were put in the market and every day brouaht out to be examined and set up for sale. One after another was taken, herself the last. " For" said sh~, "when I said to every one who came to look at me, I was free-horn, they were afraid to buy me ; then the speculators would get angry with me and threatened to shoot me if I did it a<Yain · but it did not stop me, for I knew they wanted th~ mo'ney for me, and they never shall beat it out of me as long as I live." But there was not wantwg one who called hi,nself a man; ready to pay twelve hundre• l dollars for her and take her still further from her home. THE GAG. 139 She told me much of her treatment by the unfeeling family into which she was taken, and recounted, with many tears, the four years until she was purchased by her present master, who knew not at the time she was ever free. She did not tell him, probably because she was rejoiced at any change, assured that it could hardly be for the worse. And she was truly much more comfortably situated. But what of that 1 What is the scourging and lashing of the body compared with the constant and daily agony of mind she endures, as he scontrasts her former condition with her present, not only to toil on without recompense, but liable at any time to be sold and taken away, she knows not where. I am happy to add, that her present situation was comfortable as it can be while she is held in bondage, her master, though nursed in the lap of slavery, and a full be!iever in its rightfulness, is a man of kind feelings, and says that freedom shall be granted her as soon as he is convinced that her story is true. From subsequent acquaintance I found her very wretched and sad. '!'hough going through her daily routine of duty with apparent patience,-every sigh she breathed was for liberty, earnestly desiring toreturn once more to her " poor old mother," and her " own country." The Gag. Ho! children of the granite hills, That bristle with the hackmatack, And sparkle with the crystal riils That burry toward the Merrimack, Dam up those rills !-for, while they run, They all rebuke your Atherton. • " I have no feelings of personal hostility towards the Hon. Charles G. Atherton. But if, by stifling the prayers of more than one million of his fellow men, in order that he may perpetuate the slavery of more than two millions, the best friend I have on earth shall seek to make his name immortal, I will do my best to-help him. |