Knowing the
times when she took her daily walks, they put the fattest and sleekest
black boy whom they could find, into a truckle-cart, and made two of the
sons of the 'most opulent' citizens race down hill with him. Slavery,
therefore, is not the bad thing she and we had supposed. The female
teacher of a school in the neighborhood of her daily walk was suborned,
most probably, by the 'opulent' ladies of the place, to practise another
pleasing trick. Two white girls and a black girl were made to practise
running with their arms interlocked, and one day, as our friend came in
sight, they were pushed out to astonish her with one instance of white
girls hugging a negro slave-child. No doubt our friend, on seeing these
three together, soliloquized as follows:--
"See Truth, Love, and Mercy in triumph descending,
All nature now glowing in Eden's first bloom."
The old negro, respectable and well off, was one of those rare
exceptions to surrounding degradation which you now and then see in
Southern cities. The poor slave in the cars, gentle, timid, quivering,
was the true exponent of slavery. Had our authoress filled her book with
such illustrations exclusively, she would have written more truthfully,
more for her reputation with the real 'friends of the slave,' and, we
confess, more in accordance with our taste.
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