though it was only yesterday. And
as to the house of correction, it seemed as though its doors were
unbarred to me, and the wretched, lacerated inmates of its cold, dark
cells were presented to my view. Night and day they were before me, and
yet my hands were bound as with chains of iron. I could do nothing but
weep over the scenes of horror which passed in review before my mind.
Sometimes I felt as though I was willing to fly from Carolina, be the
consequences what they might. At others, it seemed as though the very
exercises I was suffering under were preparing me for future usefulness
to them; and this,--_hope_, I can scarcely call it, for my very soul
trembled at the solemn thought of such a work being placed in my feeble
and unworthy hands,--this idea was the means of reconciling me to
suffer, and causing me to feel something of a willingness to pass
through any trials, if I could only be the means of exposing the
cruelty and injustice which was practised in the institution of
oppression, and of bringing to light the hidden things of darkness, of
revealing the secrets of iniquity and abolishing its present
regulations,--above all, of exposing the awful sin of professors of
religion sending their slaves to such a place of cruelty, and having
them whipped so that when they come out they can scarcely walk, or
having them put upon the treadmill until they are lamed for days
afterwards. These are not things I have heard; no, my own eyes have
looked upon them and wept over them. Such was the opinion I formed of
the workhouse that for many months whilst I was a teacher in the
Sunday-school, having a scholar in my class who was the daughter of the
master of it, I had frequent occasion to go to it to mark her lessons,
and no one can imagine my feelings in walking down that street. It
seemed as though I was walking on the very confines of hell; and this
winter, being obliged to pass it to pay a visit to a friend, I suffered
so much that I could not get over it for days, and wondered how any
real Christian could live near such a place."

It may appear to some who read this biography that Angelina's
expressions of feeling were over-strained. But it was not so. Her
nervous organization was exceedingly delicate, and became more so after
she began to give her best thoughts to the cause of humanity. In her
own realization, at least, of the suffering of others there was no
exaggeration.

Not long after making the above record of