Page:A hairdresser's experience in high life.djvu/183

Rh were nine or ten in a family, and but one or two servants to do the work for the whole, those poor creatures had to get up at four o'clock in the morning, and not see bed again, probably, till one or two the next morning.

These poor creatures are worked to death, and, when worn out and good for nothing, all at once a charitable feeling rises up in the master's breast, and he gives them free papers, puts them on the cars, and sends them off to Cincinnati. This I can testify to, as I have one in my house now, in her fifty second year, perfectly helpless, afflicted with rheumatism, and not able to more than limp around. From her appearance, she has been a hard-working and faithful servant. Her master one day took a charitable notion, came home and asked her if she would not like to go to Cincinnati. She told him she would go any place to get her freedom. He started the poor old soul off, with fifteen dollars in her pocket, to a strange place, where she knew no one. Had she not fallen in with friends, she might have been sent to jail, or the pest-house, where there are several at this time from the South and other slave States, who have been very charitably dealt with, and given their freedom. This poor old creature was knocked about from post to pillar, till at length I stumbled over her, and she is with me now. Her master is a captain on one of the most elegant steamers that float on the Southern waters.

I sometimes think it strange how so many of these creatures fall into my hands; but I can tell you how one woman and child, from New Orleans, fell into my hands, and I was very glad to let her fall out. There was a gentleman, from New Orleans, at