Page:Aunt Phillis's Cabin.djvu/107

 In reply to the question, "Are you free?" there was but a moment's hesitation; her pride of heart gave way to her inherent love of truth, "I'll tell no lie," she answered; "I am a slave!"

"Why do you not take your freedom?" was the rejoinder. "You are in a free state; they cannot force you to the South, if you will take the offers we make you, and leave your master."

"You are Abolitionists, I 'spose?" asked Phillis.

"We are," they said, "and we will help you off."

"I want none of your help," said Phillis. "My husband and children are at home; but if they wasn't, I am an honest woman, and am not in the habit of taking any thing. I'll never take my freedom. If my master would give it to me, and the rest of us, I should be thankful. I am not going to begin stealing, and I fifty years of age."

An eye-witness described the straightening of her tall figure, and the indignant flashing of her eye, also the discomfited looks of her northern friends.

I have somewhere read of a fable of Iceland. According to it, lost souls are to be parched in the burning heat of Hecla, and then cast for ever to cool in its never-thawing snows. Although Phillis could not have quoted this, her opinions would have applied it. For some reason, it was evident to her mind (for she had been well instructed in the Bible) that slavery was from the first ordained as a curse. It might, to her high spirit, have been like burning in the bosom of Hecla; but taking refuge among Abolitionists was, from the many instances that had come to her knowledge, like cooling in its never-thawing snows.

At the time that we introduced her to the reader, she was the mother of twelve children. Some were quite young, but a number of them were grown, and all of them, with the exception of one, (the namesake of his father,) inherited their mother's energy of character. She had accustomed them to constant industry, and unqualified