nd where the voice of prayer was heard around the family
altar, and where she herself retired for private devotion thrice each
day, was the very place in which, when her slaves were to be whipped
with the cowhide, they were taken to receive the infliction; and the
wail of the sufferer would be heard, where, perhaps only a few hours
previous, rose the voices of prayer and praise. This mistress would
occasionally send her slaves, male and female, to the Charleston
work-house to be punished. One poor girl, whom she sent there to be
flogged, and who was accordingly stripped _naked_ and whipped, showed
me the deep gashes on her back--I might have laid my whole finger in
them--_large pieces of flesh had actually been cut out by the
torturing lash_. She sent another female slave there, to be imprisoned
and worked on the tread-mill. This girl was confined several days, and
forced to work the mill while in a state of suffering from another
cause. For ten days or two weeks after her return, she was lame, from
the violent exertion necessary to enable her to keep the step on the
machine. She spoke to me with intense feeling of this outrage upon
her, as a _woman_. Her men servants were sometimes flogged there; and
so exceedingly offensive has been the putrid flesh of their lacerated
backs, for days after the infliction, that they would be kept out of
the house--the smell arising from their wounds being too horrible to
be endured. They were always stiff and sore for some days, and not in
a condition to be seen by visitors.

This professedly Christian woman was a most awful illustration of the
ruinous influence of arbitrary power upon the temper--her bursts of
passion upon the heads of her victims were dreaded even by her own
children, and very often, all the pleasure of social intercourse
around the domestic board, was destroyed by her ordering the cook into
her presence, and storming at him, when the dinner or breakfast was
not prepared to her taste, and in the presence of all her children,
commanding the waiter to slap his face. _Fault-finding_, was with her
the constant accompaniment of every meal, and banished that peace
which should hover around the social board, and smile on every face.
It was common for her to order brothers to whip their own sisters, and
sisters their own brothers, and yet no woman visited among the poor
more than she did, or gave more liberally to relieve their wants.
This may seem perfectly unaccountable to