ng for rather a long journey; and on inquiring for some one
to sew for me, Sallie Smith was sent to me. When she came, I learned
that she was an inmate of one of the new cottages, and the grandmother
of the pretty child of whom we have spoken.

Sallie Smith came and went, carrying home pieces of work, which she
dispatched quickly and well. She was a fine-looking mulatto-woman, in
the prime of life, with wavy black hair and sparkling eyes, though her
features preserved the negro cast. Her manners had a warmth and
geniality belonging to good specimens of her race, with a freedom that
was odd and amusing, but never offensive. When she brought home her
work, with some comical expression of fatigue, she would sink upon the
ground, as if utterly exhausted by the walk and the heat, and sitting at
my feet, would play with the hem of my dress, as she talked over what
she had done, and what still remained to be done; or related to me, in
answer to my inquiries, scraps of her past history, her thoughts about
her race in general, her religious experiences, and the affairs of her
church in Cincinnati, of which she was an enthusiastic member.

On inquiring about the health of her old, bed-ridden husband, I learned,
to my surprise, that he was a white man.

'You see,' she said, 'he wasn't a gentleman at all; he was one of those
_mean whites_ down South.' As she said this, the scornful emphasis on
_mean whites_ was something quite indescribable. Truly, the condition of
poor whites at the South must be pitiable indeed, to be regarded with
such utter contempt by the very slaves themselves.

'We lived,' she continued, 'in a miserable little hut, in a pine wood,
and I was his only slave. I kept house, and worked for him. He was one
of the shiftless kind, and there was nothing _he_ could do. Oh! he was a
poor, miserable creature, I tell you, always in debt! Well, we had two
children, a girl and a boy.'

'Did he ever have any other wife?' I inquired.

She fired up, indignantly. 'No, indeed; I guess I'd never have stood
that! Well, he was always promising to come to a Free State; but he was
always in debt, and couldn't get the money to come, and Jane, she was
growing up a very pretty girl, and when she was about seventeen, the
creditors came and seized her, and sold her for a slave, to pay his
debts.'

'What! sold his own daughter!' I exclaimed.

'Why, yes. She was _my_ daughter, too, you know; so she was his
property, and so he coul