hot summer came again, and made the turpentine drop
from the thin roof over my head.

During the long nights I was restless for want of air, and I had no room to
toss and turn. There was but one compensation; the atmosphere was so
stifled that even mosquitos would not condescend to buzz in it. With all my
detestation of Dr. Flint, I could hardly wish him a worse punishment,
either in this world or that which is to come, than to suffer what I
suffered in one single summer. Yet the laws allowed _him_ to be out in the
free air, while I, guiltless of crime, was pent up here, as the only means
of avoiding the cruelties the laws allowed him to inflict upon me! I don't
know what kept life within me. Again and again, I thought I should die
before long; but I saw the leaves of another autumn whirl through the air,
and felt the touch of another winter. In summer the most terrible thunder
storms were acceptable, for the rain came through the roof, and I rolled up
my bed that it might cool the hot boards under it. Later in the season,
storms sometimes wet my clothes through and through, and that was not
comfortable when the air grew chilly. Moderate storms I could keep out by
filling the chinks with oakum.

But uncomfortable as my situation was, I had glimpses of things out of
doors, which made me thankful for my wretched hiding-place. One day I saw a
slave pass our gate, muttering, "It's his own, and he can kill it if he
will." My grandmother told me that woman's history. Her mistress had that
day seen her baby for the first time, and in the lineaments of its fair
face she saw a likeness to her husband. She turned the bondwoman and her
child out of doors, and forbade her ever to return. The slave went to her
master, and told him what had happened. He promised to talk with her
mistress, and make it all right. The next day she and her baby were sold to
a Georgia trader.

Another time I saw a woman rush wildly by, pursued by two men. She was a
slave, the wet nurse of her mistress's children. For some trifling offence
her mistress ordered her to be stripped and whipped. To escape the
degradation and the torture, she rushed to the river, jumped in, and ended
her wrongs in death.

Senator Brown, of Mississippi, could not be ignorant of many such facts as
these, for they are of frequent occurrence in every Southern State. Yet he
stood up in the Congress of the United States, and declared that slavery
was "a great moral, social, and po