"Either and all of which explanations, or any other which can be given,
only bring more clearly to view the idea of 'money' as a reason why the
master is not to be punished, for causing the death of a slave by
whipping, if the slave happens to continue a day or two, no matter under
what mutilations and sufferings.

"Furthermore. We find the Most High decreeing perpetual bondage in
certain cases, and more than all, as we have seen, _the forcible
separation of husband and wife_ among slaves. Let me turn to Exodus xxi.
and read:--

"'1. Now these are the judgments which thou shalt set before them.

"'2. If thou buy an Hebrew servant, six years he shall serve: and in
the seventh he shall go out free for nothing.

"'3. If he came in by himself, he shall go out by himself: if he
were married, then his wife shall go out with him.

"'4. If his master have given him a wife and she have borne him
sons or daughters, _the wife and her children shall be her
master's_, and he shall go out by himself.'

"I have not finished my reading," said I; "but what do you say to that,
Mr. North?"

"Read on," said he.

"'5. And if the servant shall plainly say, I love my master, my
wife, and my children, I will not go out free:

"'6. Then his master shall bring him unto the judges, he shall also
bring him to the door, or unto the door-post, and his master shall
bore his ear through with an awl, and he shall serve him forever.'

"God decreed, therefore, that the marriage of a slave in bondage, in
those days, was dissoluble, as no other marriage was. Divorces among the
Hebrews, allowed for the hardness of their hearts, were not parallel to
the forcible separation of a slave from his wife under the hard
necessity of choice between perpetual bondage with a wife, or freedom
without her. The merciful God who kindly enacted, 'No man shall take the
nether nor the upper millstone to pledge: for he taketh a man's life to
pledge,' and that a garment pawned should be restored before sundown,
that wages should not be withheld over night, yes, the God who
legislated about bird's-nests ordained the dissolution of the marriage
tie between slaves in certain cases, unless the slave husband was
willing for his wife's sake, to be a slave forever!

"What do you say to this, Mr. North?" I asked again.

Said Mrs. North, "I begin to see the origin and cause of infidelity
among the abolitionists."

"Tel