n the world should be more free than she herself. She felt
the wind fanning over her on its way, she took the rich odors that it
brought, she looked after the flower-petal that fluttered away with it,
she saw the strong sunshine penetrating among the shadows of a jungly
spot and catching a thousand points of color in the gloom, she
recognized the constant fluent interchange among all the atoms of the
universe;--why was she alone, capable of flight, chained to one
spot?--She gazed around her at the squalor and the want, the brutish
shapes and faces, her own no better, at the narrow huts; thought of the
dull routine of work never to enrich herself, the possibility of
purchase and cruelty;--she sprung to her feet, all her blood boiling; it
seemed out of the question for her to endure it another moment.--Mas'r
Henry had told her once that he could make his fortune with her dancing,
if he chose; she stood as much in need of a fortune as Mas'r Henry,--why
not make it for herself? why not be off and away, her own mistress,
earning and eating her own bread, sending some day for Zoe, finding Sarp
in those far-off happy latitudes?--It occurred to her, like a discovery
of her own, that, doing the work she was bidden, taking the food she was
given, whipped at will, and bought and sold, she was no better than one
among the cattle of the place;--the sudden sense of degradation made
even her dark cheek burn. She laid a hand down on the earth, her great
Teraph, to see if it were possible it could still be warm and such a
wrong done to her its child. Then, all at once, she understood that wood
and river were open to her fugitive feet, and if she stayed longer in
slavery, it was the fault of no one but herself.--She stood up, for some
one called her; she obeyed the call with alacrity, for she found it in
her power to do so or not as she chose. She felt taller as she stepped
along, and held up her head with the dignity of personality. She
acknowledged, perhaps, that she was no equal of Miss Emma's,--that the
creative hand, making its first essay on her, rounded its complete work
in Miss Emma; but she declared herself now no mere offshoot of the
sod,--she was a human being, a being of beating pulses and affections,
and something within her, stifled here, longing to soar and away.

It was dark before Flor had ceased her novel course of thinking, pursued
through all her little tasks,--beautiful star-lighted dark, full of
broken breezes, soft