# The White Slave, or Memoirs of a Fugitive/Chapter 1

Contents
MEMOIRS.
CHAPTER I.
Ye who would know what evils man can inflict upon his fellew without reluctance, hesitation, or regret; ye who would! earn the limit of human endurance, and with what bitter anguish and indignant hate, the heart may swell, and yet not burst, — peruse these Memoirs!
Mine are no silken sorrows, nor sentimental sufferings; but that stern reality of actual woe, the story of which, may perhaps touch even some of those, who are every day themselves the authors of misery the same that I endured. For however the practice of tyranny may have deadened every better emotion, and the prejudices of education and interest may have hardened the heart, humanity will still extort an involuntary tribute; and men will grow uneasy at hearing of those deeds, of which the doing does not cost them a moment's inquietude,
Should I accomplish no more than this; should I be able, through the triple steel with which the love of money and the lust of domination has encircled it, to reach one bosom, — let the story of my wrongs summon up, in the mind of a single oppressor, the dark and dreaded images of his own misdeeds, and teach his conscience how to torture him with the picture of himself, and I shall be content. Next to the tears and the exultations of the emancipated, the remorse of tyrants is the choicest offering upon the altar of liberty! ​But perhaps something more may be possible; — not likely — but to be imagined — and it may be, even faintly to be hoped. Perhaps within some youthful breast, in which the evil spirits of avarice and tyranny have as yet failed to gain unlimited control, I may be able to rekindle the smothered and expiring embers of humanity. Spite of habits and prejudices inculcated and fostered from his earliest childhood, spite of the enticements of wealth and political distinction, and the still stronger enticements of indolence and ease, spite of the pratings of hollow-hearted priests, spite of the arguments of time-serving sophists, spite of the hesitation and terrors of the weak-spirited and wavering; in spite of evil precept and evil example, he dares — that generous and heroic youth! — to cherish and avow the feelings of a man.
Another Saul among the prophets, he prophesies terrible things in the ear of insolent and luxurious tyranny; in the midst of tyrants he dares to preach the good tidings of liberty; in the very school of oppression, he stands boldly forth the advocate of human rights!
He breaks down the ramparts of prejudice; he dissipates the illusions of avarice and pride; he repeals the enactments, which though wanting every feature of justice, have sacrilegiously usurped the sacred form of law! He snatches the whip from the hand of the master; he breaks — forever the fetter of the slave!
In place of reluctant. toil, drudging for another, he brings. in smiling industry to labor for herself! All nature seems to exult in the change! "The earth, no longer made barren by the tears and the blood of her children, pours forth her treasures with redoubled liberality. Existence ceases to be torture; and to live is no longer to millions, the certainty of being miserable.
Chosen Instrument of Mercy! Illustrious Deliverer! Come! come quickly!
Come! — lest, if thy coming be delayed, there come in thy place, he who will be at once, Deliverer and Avenger !