uth.' Even
the very air I breathed was tainted with scorn; for I was sent to the
neighbouring shops with Glutton, Liar, or Thief, written on my forehead.
This was, at first, the most bitter punishment; but sullen pride, or a
kind of stupid desperation, made me, at length, almost regardless of the
contempt, which had wrung from me so many solitary tears at the only
moments when I was allowed to rest.

"Thus was I the mark of cruelty till my sixteenth year; and then I have
only to point out a change of misery; for a period I never knew. Allow me
first to make one observation. Now I look back, I cannot help
attributing the greater part of my misery, to the misfortune of having
been thrown into the world without the grand support of life--a mother's
affection. I had no one to love me; or to make me respected, to enable me
to acquire respect. I was an egg dropped on the sand; a pauper by nature,
shunted from family to family, who belonged to nobody--and nobody cared
for me. I was despised from my birth, and denied the chance of obtaining
a footing for myself in society. Yes; I had not even the chance of being
considered as a fellow-creature--yet all the people with whom I lived,
brutalized as they were by the low cunning of trade, and the despicable
shifts of poverty, were not without bowels, though they never yearned for
me. I was, in fact, born a slave, and chained by infamy to slavery
during the whole of existence, without having any companions to alleviate
it by sympathy, or teach me how to rise above it by their example. But,
to resume the thread of my tale--

"At sixteen, I suddenly grew tall, and something like comeliness appeared
on a Sunday, when I had time to wash my face, and put on clean clothes.
My master had once or twice caught hold of me in the passage; but I
instinctively avoided his disgusting caresses. One day however, when the
family were at a methodist meeting, he contrived to be alone in the house
with me, and by blows--yes; blows and menaces, compelled me to submit to
his ferocious desire; and, to avoid my mistress's fury, I was obliged in
future to comply, and skulk to my loft at his command, in spite of
increasing loathing.

"The anguish which was now pent up in my bosom, seemed to open a new
world to me: I began to extend my thoughts beyond myself, and grieve for
human misery, till I discovered, with horror--ah! what horror!--that I
was with child. I know not why I felt a mixed sensation of despai