Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. I.djvu/308

Rh are, has no right over them. They are not hers; they are the property of her possessor, of the person who bought her, and with her all the children she may have, with his money; and who can sell them away whenever he pleases.” Wonderful!

The moral feeling, it is said, is becoming more and more opposed to the separation of families and of little children from their mothers by sale; and that it now no longer takes place at the public slave-auctions. But one hears in the Northern, as well as in the Southern States, of circumstances which prove what heart-breaking occurrences take place in consequence of their separation, which the effects of the system render unavoidable, and which the best slaveholders cannot always prevent.

The house-slaves here seem, in general, to be very well treated; and I have been in houses where their rooms, and all that appertains to them (for every servant, male or female, has their own excellent room), are much better than those which are provided for the free servants of our country. The relationship between the servant and the employer seems also, for the most part, to be good and heartfelt; the older servants especially seem to stand in that affectionate relationship to the family which characterises a patriarchal condition, and which it is so beautiful to witness in our good families between servant and employer; at the same time with this great difference, that with us the relationship is the free-will attachment of one rational being to another. Here also may often occur this free-will attachment, but it is then a conquest over slavery, and that slavish relationship, and I fancy that here nobody knows exactly how it is. True it is, in the meantime, that the negro race has a strong instinct of devotion and veneration, and this may be seen by the people's eyes, which have a peculiar, kind, faithful, and affectionate expression, which I like, and which reminds me of that beautiful expression in the eye