Page:The White Slave, or Memoirs of a Fugitive.djvu/23

 At this time, I did not know that colonel Moore was my father. That gentleman was indebted for no inconsiderable part of his high reputation, to a very strict attention to those conventional observances which so often usurp the place of morals. Some observances of this sort, which prevail in America, are sufficiently remarkable. It is considered for instance, no crime whatever, for a master to be, if he chooses, the father of every infant slave born upon his plantation. Yet it is esteemed a very grave breach of propriety, indeed almost an unpardonable crime, for such a father ever, in any way, to acknowledge or take any notice, of any of his unfortunate children. Imperious custom demands that he should treat them, in every respect, like his other slaves. If he drive them into the field to labor, if he sell them at auction to the highest bidder, it is all well. But if he audaciously undertake to exhibit towards them, in any way, the slightest indication of paternal tenderness, he may be sure that his character will be assailed by the tongue of universal slander; that his every weak point and unjustifiable action will be carefully sought out, malignantly magnified, and ostentatiously exposed; that he will be compelled to run a sort of moral gantlet, and will be represented among all the better sort of people, as every thing that is infamous, base and contemptible.

Colonel Moore was far too wise a man, to entertain the slightest idea of exposing himself to any thing of that sort. He had always kept the best society, — and though he might be a democrat in politics, he was certainly very much of an aristocrat and an exclusive in his feelings. Of course, he had the same sort of indescribable horror, at the thought of violating any of the settled proprieties of the society in which he moved, that a modern belle has of cotton lace, or a modern dandy of an iron fork, This being the case, nobody will wonder — so far at least as colonel Moore had any control over the matter — that I was still ignorant who my father was.

But though a secret to me, it certainly was not colonel Moore's friends and visitors. If nothing else, betrayed it, the striking resemblance between us, would