ring in my ears. Strong and athletic as I was, no hand of mine could be
raised in her defence, but at the peril of both our lives;--nor could her
husband, had he been a witness of the scene, be allowed any thing more
than unresisting submission to any cruelty, any indignity which the master
saw fit to inflict on _his wife_, but the other's _slave_.

Does any indignant reader feel that I was wanting in courage or brotherly
affection, and say that he would have interfered, and, at all hazards,
rescued his sister from the power of her master; let him remember that he
is a _freeman_; that he has not from his infancy been taught to cower
beneath the white man's frown, and bow at his bidding, or suffer all the
rigor of the slave laws. Had the gentlemanly woman-whipper been seen
beating his horse, or his ox, in the manner he beat my poor sister, and
that too for no fault which the law could recognize as an offence, he
would have been complained of most likely; but as it was, she was but a
"slave girl,"--with whom the slave law allowed her master to do what he
pleased.

Well, I finally passed on, with a clinched fist and contracted brow, to
the church, and rung the bell, I think rather furiously, to notify the
inhabitants of Bath, that it was time to assemble for the worship of that
God who has declared himself to be "no respecter of persons." With my own
heart beating wildly with indignation and sorrow, the kind reader may
imagine my feelings when I saw the smooth-faced hypocrite, the inhuman
slave-whipper, enter the church, pass quietly on to his accustomed seat,
and then meekly bow his hypocritical face on the damask cushion, in the
reverent acknowledgment of that religion which teaches its adherents "to
do unto others as they would be done by," just as if nothing unusual had
happened on that Sabbath morning. Can any one wonder that I, and other
slaves, often doubted the sincerity of every white man's religion? Can it
be a matter of astonishment, that slaves often feel that there is no just
God for the poor African? Nay, verily; and were it not for the comforting
and sustaining influence that these poor, illiterate and suffering
creatures feel as coming from an unearthly source, they would in their
ignorance all become infidels. To me, that beautiful Sabbath morning was
clouded in midnight darkness, and I retired to ponder on what could be
done.

For some reason or other, Capt. Helm had supplied every lawyer in that
sect