Page:The Life of Mary Baker Eddy (Wilbur).djvu/72

40 New Hampshire. A young colored woman who worked in a boarding-house of the city (as was related by a Boston woman sojourning there) had stolen a shawl, and though she gave it up, she was taken to the sugar house and whipped. Her screams were audible on the road. George Glover could not drive out with his wife on a pleasant evening through the magnolia-lined avenues of the “Queen City of the South” and be certain that she would not see or hear some such evidence of the inhuman side of slavery. It was thus that the issue was made real to her.

The question of freeing his slaves was frequently debated between them, Mr. Glover explaining to his wife that it had been made illegal to do so in South Carolina by a statute passed in 1820, and only by special act of the legislature could slaves be made absolutely free. Her answer to this was that she had learned of some instances where masters allowed their slaves to depart of their own free will. Then her husband argued to her that it would be a loss of property for him to free his slaves as he had accepted them in payment of debts, and very likely would have to do so again. But Mrs. Glover was insistent that to own a human being was to live in a state of sin. Glover was young, prosperous, had large contracts ahead of him, and so thought seriously of yielding to her persuasions. Events soon took the necessity of decision out of his hands and left it to his wife, who decided with characteristic moral acumen.

It was June of the summer following their