child-bearing; he said she could
hardly crawl, and he urged me very much to speak a kind word for her to
massa. She was almost all the time in hospital, and he thought she could
not live long.

Now, E----, here is another instance of the horrible injustice of this
system of slavery. In my country or in yours, a man endowed with
sufficient knowledge and capacity to be an engineer would, of course, be
in the receipt of considerable wages; his wife would, together with
himself, reap the advantages of his ability, and share the well-being his
labour earned; he would be able to procure for her comfort in sickness or
in health, and beyond the necessary household work, which the wives of
most artisans are inured to, she would have no labour to encounter; in
case of sickness even these would be alleviated by the assistance of some
stout girl of all work, or kindly neighbour, and the tidy parlour or snug
bed-room would be her retreat if unequal to the daily duties of her own
kitchen. Think of such a lot compared with that of the head engineer of
Mr. ----'s plantation, whose sole wages are his coarse food and raiment
and miserable hovel, and whose wife, covered with one filthy garment of
ragged texture and dingy colour, bare-footed and bare-headed, is daily
driven a-field to labour with aching pain-racked joints, under the lash of
a driver, or lies languishing on the earthen floor of the dismal
plantation hospital in a condition of utter physical destitution and
degradation such as the most miserable dwelling of the poorest inhabitant
of your free Northern villages never beheld the like of. Think of the
rows of tidy tiny houses in the long suburbs of Boston and Philadelphia,
inhabited by artisans of just the same grade as this poor Ned, with their
white doors and steps, their hydrants of inexhaustible fresh flowing
water, the innumerable appliances for decent comfort of their cheerful
rooms, the gay wardrobe of the wife, her cotton prints for daily use, her
silk for Sunday church-going; the careful comfort of the children's
clothing, the books and newspapers in the little parlour, the daily
district school, the weekly parish church: imagine if you can--but you are
happy that you cannot--the contrast between such an existence and that of
the best mechanic on a Southern plantation.

Did you ever read (but I am sure you never did, and no more did I), an
epic poem on fresh-water fish? Well, such a one was once written, I have
forgot