rk, now greatly increased by the passage of
the Fugitive Slave Law. However, I resolved to try the experiment. I was
again fortunate in my employer. The new Mrs. Bruce was an American, brought
up under aristocratic influences, and still living in the midst of them;
but if she had any prejudice against color, I was never made aware of it;
and as for the system of slavery, she had a most hearty dislike of it. No
sophistry of Southerners could blind her to its enormity. She was a person
of excellent principles and a noble heart. To me, from that hour to the
present, she has been a true and sympathizing friend. Blessings be with her
and hers!

About the time that I reentered the Bruce family, an event occurred of
disastrous import to the colored people. The slave Hamlin, the first
fugitive that came under the new law, was given up by the bloodhounds of
the north to the bloodhounds of the south. It was the beginning of a reign
of terror to the colored population. The great city rushed on in its whirl
of excitement, taking no note of the "short and simple annals of the poor."
But while fashionables were listening to the thrilling voice of Jenny Lind
in Metropolitan Hall, the thrilling voices of poor hunted colored people
went up, in an agony of supplication, to the Lord, from Zion's church. Many
families, who had lived in the city for twenty years, fled from it now.
Many a poor washerwoman, who, by hard labor, had made herself a comfortable
home, was obliged to sacrifice her furniture, bid a hurried farewell to
friends, and seek her fortune among strangers in Canada. Many a wife
discovered a secret she had never known before--that her husband was a
fugitive, and must leave her to insure his own safety. Worse still, many a
husband discovered that his wife had fled from slavery years ago, and as
"the child follows the condition of its mother," the children of his love
were liable to be seized and carried into slavery. Every where, in those
humble homes, there was consternation and anguish. But what cared the
legislators of the "dominant race" for the blood they were crushing out of
trampled hearts?

When my brother William spent his last evening with me, before he went to
California, we talked nearly all the time of the distress brought on our
oppressed people by the passage of this iniquitous law; and never had I
seen him manifest such bitterness of spirit, such stern hostility to our
oppressors. He was himself free from the o