Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. III.djvu/353

Rh voice which calls to them every day from the midst of the life in which they live, like insects of a day.

July 3rd.—I have to-day, in company with an estimable German gentleman, resident at Richmond, visited some of the negro jails, that is, those places of imprisonment in which negroes are in part punished, and in part confined for sale. I saw in one of these jails, a tall, strong-limbed negro, sitting silent and gloomy, with his right-hand wrapped in a cloth: I asked if he were ill.

“No,” replied his loquacious keeper, “but he is a very bad rascal. His master, who lives higher up the river, has parted him from his wife and children, to sell him down South, as he wanted to punish him, and now, the scoundrel, to be revenged upon his master, and to make himself fetch a less sum of money, has cut off the fingers of his right hand! The rascal asked me to lend him an axe to knock the nails into his shoes with, and I lent it him without suspecting any bad intention, and now has the fellow gone and maimed himself for life!”

I went up to the negro, who certainly had not a good countenance, and asked him whether he were a Christian. He replied curtly, “no!” Whether he ever had heard of Christ? He again replied, “no!” I said to him, that if he had known him, he would not have done this act; but that even now he ought not to believe himself abandoned, because He who has said—“Come unto me, all ye that are weary and heavy laden,” had spoken also to him and would console and recreate even him.

He listened to me at the commencement with a gloomy countenance, but by degrees he brightened up, and at the close looked quite melted. This embittered soul was evidently still open and accessible to good. The sun shone into the prison-yard where he sat with his maimed hand, and the heavy irons on his feet, but no Christian had come hither to preach to him the Gospel of Mercy.

The door of the prison was opened to us by a negro,