Page:A hairdresser's experience in high life.djvu/250

252 scourged. If the women are low-spirited, they give them some stimulating drink to rouse them up and drive away their dullness or low spirits; while to the men, brandy, mixed with a little gunpowder, is given for the same purpose. The slaves and the apartments are both dressed up at particular times, when the purchasers are in the habit of coming in.

"About a week after this occurrence, the young lady requested me to go down and see this girl, if I could, but not to let any one know what my object was. I went, and walked round, looking at them all, until I at length got to where she was, when, in a low tone, I told her the message sent by the young lady to her, 'to remember her mother's words, and what she herself had said to her.' She replied, 'Tell her I have made a vow, and it is registered in heaven—death before dishonor'. I returned to the hotel and gave the young lady the girl's reply. She was laying on the sofa, and her mother sitting beside her; she exclaimed, 'God will hear my prayers, mother, I know He will.'

"That was the last time I saw the slave girl until, some two or three years after, I met her and her mother on Broadway, in New York. I was walking when I met the two; but having never seen them but two or three times, and not expecting to meet them there, I did not know her. However, she at once knew me, and spoke to me. We went over and sat down in the Park, when she told me all her troubles. After her mother had been about a year in Texas, she came across a gentleman who knew her former master, but did not know he was dead. On hearing of his death, and her having been sold, he was very sorry, and told