for he
felt the _exertion_ for days afterward, but he could not let his
servant go on in the neglect of his business, it was _his duty_ to
chastise him. "His duty" to flog this boy of seventeen so severely
that he felt _the exertion_ for days after! and yet he never felt it
to be his duty to instruct him, or have him instructed, even in the
common principles of morality. I heard the mother of this man say it
would be no surprise to her, if he killed a slave some day, for, that,
when transported with passion he did not seem to care what he did. He
once broke a _large_ stick over the back of a slave and at another
time the ivory butt-end of a long coach whip over the _head_ of
another. This last was attacked with epileptic fits some months after,
and has ever since been subject to them, and occasionally to violent
fits of insanity.

Southern mistresses sometimes flog their slaves themselves though
generally one slave is compelled to flog another. Whilst staying at a
friend's house some years ago, I one day saw the mistress with a
cow-hide in her hand, and heard her scolding in an under tone, her
waiting man, who was about twenty-five years old. Whether she actually
inflicted the blows I do not know, for I hastened out of sight and
hearing. It was not the first time I had seen a mistress thus engaged.
I knew she was a cruel mistress, and had heard her daughters
disputing, whether their mother did right or wrong, to send the slave
_children_, (whom she sent out to sweep chimneys) to the work house to
be whipped if they did not bring in their wages regularly. This woman
moved in the most fashionable circle in Charleston. The income of this
family was derived mostly from the hire of their slaves, about one
hundred in number. Their luxuries were blood-bought luxuries indeed.
And yet what stranger would ever have inferred their cruelties from
the courteous reception and bland manners of the parlor. Every thing
cruel and revolting is carefully concealed from strangers, especially
those from the north. Take an instance. I have known the master and
mistress of a family send to their friends to _borrow_ servants to
wait on company, because their own slaves had been so cruelly flogged
in the work house, that they could not walk without limping at every
step, and their putrified flesh emitted such an intolerable smell that
they were not fit to be in the presence of company. How can
northerners know these things when they are hospit