ip, boys; do
well by me, and I'll do well by you."

The boys addressed responded the invariable "Yes, Mas'r," for ages
the watchword of poor Africa; but it's to be owned they did not look
particularly cheerful; they had their various little prejudices in favor
of wives, mothers, sisters, and children, seen for the last time,--and
though "they that wasted them required of them mirth," it was not
instantly forthcoming.

"I've got a wife," spoke out the article enumerated as "John, aged
thirty," and he laid his chained hand on Tom's knee,--"and she don't
know a word about this, poor girl!"

"Where does she live?" said Tom.

"In a tavern a piece down here," said John; "I wish, now, I _could_ see
her once more in this world," he added.

Poor John! It _was_ rather natural; and the tears that fell, as he
spoke, came as naturally as if he had been a white man. Tom drew a long
breath from a sore heart, and tried, in his poor way, to comfort him.

And over head, in the cabin, sat fathers and mothers, husbands and
wives; and merry, dancing children moved round among them, like so
many little butterflies, and everything was going on quite easy and
comfortable.

"O, mamma," said a boy, who had just come up from below, "there's a
negro trader on board, and he's brought four or five slaves down there."

"Poor creatures!" said the mother, in a tone between grief and
indignation.

"What's that?" said another lady.

"Some poor slaves below," said the mother.

"And they've got chains on," said the boy.

"What a shame to our country that such sights are to be seen!" said
another lady.

"O, there's a great deal to be said on both sides of the subject," said
a genteel woman, who sat at her state-room door sewing, while her little
girl and boy were playing round her. "I've been south, and I must say I
think the negroes are better off than they would be to be free."

"In some respects, some of them are well off, I grant," said the lady to
whose remark she had answered. "The most dreadful part of slavery, to my
mind, is its outrages on the feelings and affections,--the separating of
families, for example."

"That _is_ a bad thing, certainly," said the other lady, holding up
a baby's dress she had just completed, and looking intently on its
trimmings; "but then, I fancy, it don't occur often."

"O, it does," said the first lady, eagerly; "I've lived many years in
Kentucky and Virginia both, and I've seen enough to make any o