out of sight and
hearing. It was not the first time I had seen a mistress thus engaged.
I knew she was a cruel mistress, and had heard her daughters
disputing, whether their mother did right or wrong, to send the slave
_children_, (whom she sent out to sweep chimneys) to the work house to
be whipped if they did not bring in their wages regularly. This woman
moved in the most fashionable circle in Charleston. The income of this
family was derived mostly from the hire of their slaves, about one
hundred in number. Their luxuries were blood-bought luxuries indeed.
And yet what stranger would ever have inferred their cruelties from
the courteous reception and bland manners of the parlor. Every thing
cruel and revolting is carefully concealed from strangers, especially
those from the north. Take an instance. I have known the master and
mistress of a family send to their friends to _borrow_ servants to
wait on company, because their own slaves had been so cruelly flogged
in the work house, that they could not walk without limping at every
step, and their putrified flesh emitted such an intolerable smell that
they were not fit to be in the presence of company. How can
northerners know these things when they are hospitably received at
southern tables and firesides? I repeat it, no one who has not been an
_integral part_ of a slaveholding community, can have any idea of its
abominations. It is a whited sepulchre full of dead men's bones and
all uncleanness. Blessed be God, the Angel of _Truth_ has descended
and rolled away the stone from the mouth of the sepulchre, and sits
upon it. The abominations so long hidden are now brought forth before
all Israel and the sun. Yes, the Angel of Truth _sits upon this
stone_, and it can never be rolled back again.

The utter disregard of the comfort of the slaves, in _little_ things,
can scarcely be conceived by those who have not been a _component
part_ of slaveholding communities. Take a few particulars out of
hundreds that might be named. In South Carolina musketoes swarm in
myriads, more than half the year--they are so excessively annoying at
night, that no family thinks of sleeping without nets or
"musketoe-bars" hung over their bedsteads, yet slaves are never
provided with them, unless it be the favorite old domestics who get
the cast-off pavilions; and yet these very masters and mistresses will
be so kind to their _horses_ as to provide them with _fly nets_.
Bedsteads and bedding too,