Page:The White Slave, or Memoirs of a Fugitive.djvu/172

 bosom while he is yet all unconscious of his misery, yet what a sad, wretched, desolate fate awaits him!. Shut out from every chance or hope of any thing which it is worth one's while to live for; — bred up a slave!

A slave! — That single word, what volumes it does speak! It speaks of chains, of whips and tortures, compulsive labor, hunger and fatigues, and all the miseries our wretched bodies suffer. It speaks of haughty power, and insolent commands; of insatiate avarice; of pampered pride and purse-proud luxury; and of the cold indifference and scornful unconcern with which the oppressor looks down upon his victims. It speaks of crouching fear, and base servility; of low, mean cunning, and treacherous revenge. It speaks of humanity outraged; manhood degraded; the social charities of life, the sacred ties of. father, wife and child trampled under foot; of aspirations crushed; of hope extinguished; and the light of knowledge sacrilegiously put out. It speaks of man deprived of all that makes him amiable or makes him noble; stripped of his soul, and sunk into a beast.

And thou, my child, to this fate thou art born! May heaven have mercy*on thee, for man has none!

The first burst of instinctive and thoughtless pleasure, with which I had looked upon my infant boy, was dissipated forever, the moment I had recovered myself enough to recollect what he was born to. Various and ever changing, but always wretched and distressing were the feelings with which I gazed at him, as he slept upon his mother's bosom, or waking, smiled at her caresses. He was indeed a pretty baby; — a dear, dear child; — and for his mother's sake I loved him, how I loved him! Yet struggle as I might, I could not, for a moment, escape the bitter thought of what his fate must be. Full well I knew that did he live to be a man, he would repay my love, and justly, with curses, curses on the father who had bestowed upon him nothing but a life incumbered and made worse than worthless, by the inheritance of slavery.

I found no longer the same pleasure in Cassy's society, which it used to afford me; or rather the pleasure which I could not but take in it, was intermingled with much new

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