r to the newspapers, "as a domestic
servant" until 1838, when "she was sold to Belmonti."

Mr. Miller's public statement was not as full and candid as it looked.
How, if the girl was sold to Mrs. Canby, his mother--how is it that
Belmonti bought her of Miller himself? The answer is that while Williams
never re-appeared, the girl, in February, 1835, "the girl Bridget," now
the mother of three children, was with these children bought back again by
that same Mr. Miller from the entirely passive Mrs. Canby, for the same
three hundred and fifty dollars; the same price for the four which he had
got, or had seemed to get, for the mother alone when she was but a child
of twelve years. Thus had Mr. Miller become the owner of the woman, her
two sons, and her daughter, had had her service for the keeping, and had
never paid but one hundred dollars. This point he prudently overlooked in
his public statement. Nor did he count it necessary to emphasize the
further fact that when this slave-mother was about twenty-eight years old
and her little daughter had died, he sold her alone, away from her two
half-grown sons, for ten times what he had paid for her, to be the
bond-woman of the wifeless keeper of a dram-shop.

But these were not the only omissions. Why had Williams never come back
either for the slave or for the proceeds of her sale? Mr. Miller omitted
to state, what he knew well enough, that the girl was so evidently white
that Williams could not get rid of her, even to him, by an open sale. When
months and years passed without a word from Williams, the presumption was
strong that Williams knew the girl was not of African tincture, at least
within the definition of the law, and was content to count the
provisional transfer to Miller equivalent to a sale.

Miller, then, was--heedless enough, let us call it--to hold in African
bondage for twenty years a woman who, his own witnesses testified, had
every appearance of being a white person, without ever having seen the
shadow of a title for any one to own her, and with everything to indicate
that there was none. Whether he had any better right to own the several
other slaves whiter than this one whom those same witnesses of his were
forward to state he owned and had owned, no one seems to have inquired.
Such were the times; and it really was not then remarkable that this
particular case should involve a lady noted for her good works and a
gentleman who drove "the finest equipage in