inion very prevalent in some parts of the United States."

It seemed impossible to know Phillis without feeling for her sentiments of
the highest respect. The blood of the freeman and the slave mingled in her
veins; her well-regulated mind slowly advanced to a conclusion; but once
made, she rarely changed it.

Phillis would have been truly happy to have obtained her own freedom, and
that of her husband and children: she scorned the idea of running away, or
of obtaining it otherwise than as a gift from her owner. She was a firm
believer in the Bible, and often pondered on the words of the angel,
"Return and submit thyself to thy mistress." She had on one occasion
accompanied her master and Mrs. Weston to the North, where she was soon
found out by some of that disinterested class of individuals called
Abolitionists. In reply to the question, "Are you free?" there was but a
moment's hesitation; her pride of heart gave way to her inherent love of
truth, "I'll tell no lie," she answered; "I am a slave!"

"Why do you not _take_ your freedom?" was the rejoinder. "You are in a free
state; they cannot force you to the South, if you will take the offers we
make you, and leave your master."

"You are Abolitionists, I 'spose?" asked Phillis.

"We are," they said, "and we will help you off."

"I want none of your help," said Phillis. "My husband and children are at
home; but if they wasn't, I am an honest woman, and am not in the habit of
_taking_ any thing. I'll never _take_ my freedom. If my master would give
it to me, and the rest of us, I should be thankful. I am not going to begin
stealing, and I fifty years of age."

An eye-witness described the straightening of her tall figure, and the
indignant flashing of her eye, also the discomfited looks of her northern
friends.

I have somewhere read of a fable of Iceland. According to it, lost souls
are to be parched in the burning heat of Hecla, and then cast for ever to
cool in its never-thawing snows. Although Phillis could not have quoted
this, her opinions would have applied it. For some reason, it was evident
to her mind (for she had been well instructed in the Bible) that slavery
was from the first ordained as a curse. It might, to her high spirit, have
been like burning in the bosom of Hecla; but taking refuge among
Abolitionists was, from the many instances that had come to her knowledge,
like cooling in its never-thawing snows.

At the time that we introduced her to