Anti-slavery bugle. [volume] (New-Lisbon, Ohio) 1845-1861, 1849-11-24

licitous external nature, when on every hand
the crucified Christ looked on you from out the
eyes of these brothers and sisters , Could the
extreme of slaveholding hospitality make invi-
siblc the solemn apprehcnsive slave who, while
ministering to your comfort, was foreper exclu-
ded from an equal sympathy and equal rights :
l have referred to the depressed spirits of the
slaves in Missouri, and this reminds me of an
incident that bears on the assertion. L had just
been conversing with a highly intelligent wo-
man, the mother of two children, one a dark
boy OF nine or ten years old, and the other a
fair girl of five. My object being much to as
certain which of the men 1 saw about was the
husband of the woman. She had informed me
amid signs and despairing CALCULATIONS that " her
heart had been all torn to pieces, that she had
been and was treated in all respects like a brute,
that she had been forced from Kentucky where
her first husband lived, and that after living single
for four or five years, lonely and sad, (for she
heard by accident two years after removing of
her husbands death one year after she left him.
she married again, and now they had sold her
husband cup to Liberty county, some hundreds
of miles distant, and she never expected to sec
him again" With my heart full l sought my
own apartment, where mine host of the reform
cd school had repaired to sec that l had a good
backlog and suitable forcsticks for a winters
day. A figure passed the window at the in
slant, and a solitary strain of some half-sad,
half-comic melody fingered behind. "Ah!'
said my courteous host, rubbing his hands, with
the air of one who secs nothing more to be de-
sired, "thcy are happier than we arc no cares
of any sort-such cheerful natures" And the
finely built man who now sprang with a bound
over the fence, who had nanliRess stamped in
every line of his couutcnancc, was owned by a
minor of four years old, and was doomed until
she was of age, to be hired out from the auction
block afrcsh every year-now to be fifty, now
twenty, and now, as with us, only q mile from
his wife, whom he tcnderly loved. He had
cleared away the struggling branches through
half a mile of woods in order to be able to take
a short cut late at night and return before four
in the morning and yet these Christian re-
formers grudgcd him the comfort he had, faith
full laborcr as he was. Why, l could not turn
round but the wrong without p~aliation must be
met.
Oh! 1 remember me well of a gentle girl
who was hired of the Rev. Thomas Allen,
a Campbcllitc preacher, and whose services as
child's nurse especially were so valuable that
her employer declared if she owned her, she
would not part with her on any account. l Of
fercd to teach her to read, seeing that she was
exceedingly anxious to learn, and ono night as
she kncclcd beside my bed holding the lamp
while 1 explained the lesson, 1 noticed a deep
scar on her check. "How came that 20 l said.
/" Master Tommy didit," was her cool, indiifer-
ont reply, recurring without pause to her book.
" What-what do you mean y "Oh, master
Tommy did it with the cow-hidci You know
master Tommy Allen. He was here the other
day. 1 sprang from the bed and stood erect
on the floor, for one docs not realize from read
ing in books. "What had you done? l en-
quircd. "Oh," she answered in the same tone
of indifference, as if every day occurrences
needed no explanation, "oh, l don't remember
what l did that time. He used to beat me so
often that l can't remember what that was for"
Her back was marked. No sense of decency
had been pretended ON the part of this Rev.
william. The sister of this girl had tended Mr..
AS daughter through a severe sickness, and
that amiable invalid kept a cow-hide beside her
with which to arouse the young nurse from any
unnatural drowsincss. That's nothing she
continued, master Tommy whipped our cook
till the blood squirted up on the ceiling -
"What had she donei' "Oh, she let the rim
of one of the pot lids melt off" Threats of a
whipping, OF Of what she dreaded more, the
being sent home to her master, a fear which
kept her in tears for a whole week, ~cffcctually
stopped our reading lessons. But | shall never
forget this girls low, musical Voucher free
dom from petty jcalousy-her christian charity.
Tho cagcrncss with which the slaves sought to
learn struck me with surprise. One night ]
watched what l am sure would have been a
picture for any artist. In a dingy, smoke
BACKED barn of a kitchen, on the sunkcn stones
of a broken hearth, crouchcd the dark boy Of
=, ten, to whom 1 alluded before, with a tattered
, spelling book in his hand. Over his shoulder
f leaned a hard-faccd white boy of his own age
E who had been bribed by the promise of half
peck of nuts, to give him some help. Above
them both and resting partly against the ridge
of the huge brick Fireplace, stood the mother
!, intent as if jealous for her boys gain, holding
g in her hand an old iron spoon filled with soal
V grease, in which a bit of rag served as wick
g and which was, as the light grew dim, rcplen
ished from the kettle over the fire.
Is Do l weary yous These "reminiscences do S
# crowd Oh me. l laugh when l hear of peopl
V not necessarily sacrificing principle by living i
a slave State. "One need not endorse" sa
they, " and its of no sort of use to assail all tn
10 time Yes, my friend, but are there not sin
:; of omission as well as of commission. For my
self 1 can honestly say, that l seldom, if eve