and makes the wives
wretched. And as for the colored race, it needs an abler pen than mine to
describe the extremity of their sufferings, the depth of their degradation.

Yet few slaveholders seem to be aware of the widespread moral ruin
occasioned by this wicked system. Their talk is of blighted cotton
crops--not of the blight on their children's souls.

If you want to be fully convinced of the abominations of slavery, go on a
southern plantation, and call yourself a negro trader. Then there will be
no concealment; and you will see and hear things that will seem to you
impossible among human beings with immortal souls.

X. A Perilous Passage In The Slave Girl's Life.

After my lover went away, Dr. Flint contrived a new plan. He seemed to have
an idea that my fear of my mistress was his greatest obstacle. In the
blandest tones, he told me that he was going to build a small house for me,
in a secluded place, four miles away from the town. I shuddered; but I was
constrained to listen, while he talked of his intention to give me a home
of my own, and to make a lady of me. Hitherto, I had escaped my dreaded
fate, by being in the midst of people. My grandmother had already had high
words with my master about me. She had told him pretty plainly what she
thought of his character, and there was considerable gossip in the
neighborhood about our affairs, to which the open-mouthed jealousy of Mrs.
Flint contributed not a little. When my master said he was going to build a
house for me, and that he could do it with little trouble and expense, I
was in hopes something would happen to frustrate his scheme; but I soon
heard that the house was actually begun. I vowed before my Maker that I
would never enter it: I had rather toil on the plantation from dawn till
dark; I had rather live and die in jail, than drag on, from day to day,
through such a living death. I was determined that the master, whom I so
hated and loathed, who had blighted the prospects of my youth, and made my
life a desert, should not, after my long struggle with him, succeed at last
in trampling his victim under his feet. I would do any thing, every thing,
for the sake of defeating him. What _could_ I do? I thought and thought,
till I became desperate, and made a plunge into the abyss.

And now, reader, I come to a period in my unhappy life, which I would
gladly forget if I could. The remembrance fills me with sorrow and shame.
It pains me to tell you of it