Page:The White Slave, or Memoirs of a Fugitive.djvu/307

 here, knows how to read; I reckon you must have heard of it somewhere; but how do you suppose it happened? When she was a young girl, there was a Yankee pedler stopped once at our house, one of those fellows as goes travelling with a horse and wagon, selling wooden clocks, — and there's one of them now," (here she pointed to the corner where 'the machine hung,) "only it hasn't gone any this ten years, — and pins and needles, and tin ware, and they do say, wooden nutmegs, though I don't know as this one that I am speaking of ever sold any. Awful cheats, though, some of those Yankee pedlers are — awful!" said the old lady, dropping her shuttle, and holding up both hands, and looking at me with a very woe-begone expression. "That's one reason our folks are all so poor, and that even those who own slaves have to keep moving off to Alabama, because these cheating Yankee pedlers carry off all the money out of the country; at least, that's what I heard colonel Thomas, the member of congress, say, the last time he was round this way electioneering. Howsomever, I don't know any harm of this particular Yankee that I was speaking of. He used to come round about once a year; and he sold his things a good deal cheaper, and I can't say but that they were just as good, as you can buy in Camden town. Well, one time this pedler came to our house, sick with a mighty smart fever. I thought he would die, sure enough; and I rather reckon he would, if Susy, there, though she was then only twelve or fourteen years old, had not looked after him just as if he had been her own father. And so, you see, when he began to get well, as it was a good while before he was able to travel again, he took to teaching the child to read, as he said, out of gratitude. He put her on the track, and gave her a spelling book out of those he carried round to sell, and a nice, new Bible, — get it, Susy, and show it to the stranger, — which he said his mother gave him just before he set out from Connecticut; and so, you see, whenever any