rty_." She no doubt
only thought how kind she was, to _allow_ her to come and stay so long
in her yard; for, let it be kept in mind, that slaveholders have
unlimited power to separate husbands and wives, parents and children,
however and whenever they please; and if this mistress had chosen to
do it, she could have debarred this woman from all intercourse with
her husband, by forbidding her to enter her premises.

Persons who own plantations and yet live in cities, often take
children from their parents as soon as they are weaned, and send them
into the country; because they do not want the time of the mother
taken up by attendance upon her own children, it being too valuable to
the mistress. As a _favor_, she is, in some cases, permitted to go to
see them once a year. So, on the other hand, if field slaves happen to
have children of an age suitable to the convenience of the master,
they are taken from their parents and brought to the city. Parents are
almost never consulted as to the disposition to be made of their
children; they have as little control over them, as have domestic
animals over the disposal of their young. Every natural and social
feeling and affection are violated with indifference; slaves are
treated as though they did not possess them.

Another way in which the feelings of slaves are trifled with and often
deeply wounded, is by changing their names; if, at the time they are
brought into a family, there is another slave of the same name; or if
the owner happens, for some other reason, not to like the name of the
new comer. I have known slaves very much grieved at having the names
of their children thus changed, when they had been called after a dear
relation. Indeed it would be utterly impossible to recount the
multitude of ways in which the _heart_ of the slave is continually
lacerated by the total disregard of his feelings as a social being and
a human creature.

The slave suffers also greatly from being continually watched. The
system of espionage which is constantly kept up over slaves is the
most worrying and intolerable that can be imagined. Many mistresses
are, in fact, during the absence of their husbands, really their
drivers; and the pleasure of returning to their families often, on the
part of the husband, is entirely destroyed by the complaints preferred
against the slaves when he comes home to his meals.

A mistress of my acquaintance asked her servant boy, one day, what was
the reaso