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s no end o' de mean ways o' sich folks. Know he ain't no gentleman, nohow!" "What does he do, Maria?" I said, trembling, yet unable to keep back the question. "He can do what he please, Miss Daisy," Maria said, in the same grave way. "'Cept de Lord above, dere no one can hinder--now massa so fur. Bes' pray de Lord, and mebbe He sen' His angel, some time." Maria's fish was ready for the kettle; some of the other servants came in, and I went with a heavy heart up the stairs. "Massa so fur"--yes! I knew that; and Mr. Edwards knew it too. Once sailed for China, and it would be long, long, before my cry for help, in the shape of one of my little letters, could reach him and get back the answer. My heart felt heavy as if I could die, while I slowly mounted the stairs to my room. It was not only that trouble was brought upon my poor friends, nor even that their short enjoyment of the word of life was hindered and interrupted; above this and worse than this was the sense of _wrong_ done to these helpless people, and done by my own father and mother. This sense was something too bitter for a child of my years to bear; it crushed me for a time. Our people had a right to the Bible as great as mine; a right to dispose of themselves as true as my father's right to dispose of himself. Christ, my Lord, had died for them as well as for me; and here was my father--_my father_--practically saying that they should not hear of it, nor know the message He had sent to them. And if anything could have made this more bitter to me, it was the consciousness that the _reason_ of it all was that we might profit by it. Those unpaid hands wrought that our hands might be free to do nothing; those empty cabins were bare, in order that our houses might be full of every soft luxury; those unlettered minds were kept unlettered that the rarest of intellectual wealth might be poured into our treasury. I knew it. For I had written to my father once to beg his leave to establish schools, where the people on the plantation might be taught to read and write. He had sent a very kind answer, saying it was just like his little Daisy to wish such a thing, and that his wish was not against it, if it could be done; but that the laws of the State, and for wise reasons, forbade it. Greatly puzzled by this, I one day carried my puzzle to Preston. He laughed at me as usual, but at the same time explained that it would not be safe; for that if the slaves were allow
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