Page:The White Slave, or Memoirs of a Fugitive.djvu/309

 self-composure, it was easy to perceive that she experienced no little terror, as if she were now in danger of being called to account for that act of childish generosity. However, I very soon quieted her fears on that score. Great, indeed, was her astonishment, when I informed her, that I was the selfsame white prisoner whom she had released, and what was more, that I was both ready and able to make some return to her for the favor she had then done me.

Upon taking the liberty after this introduction, and the assurance that I wished to befriend her, to inquire a little into her domestic affairs, I learnt, chiefly indeed from this old woman, who insisted upon doing pretty much all the talking, that her husband, though a good sort of a man enough, was shiftless and idle, and that the support of the family devolved pretty much on the women. The husband, indeed, wanted to emigrate, but the old woman, with a degree of home feeling not very usual, so far as I have noticed, with that class of the American people, was unwilling to go, and the daughter would not without the mother. It seemed to be the great object of the daughter's ambition to send her eldest boy, Tom, to school. She had already taught him all she knew, and he was presently called in to give a specimen of his accomplishments by reading a chapter from the pedler's Bible, which the good mother produced from a closet, and which, carefully covered with cloth, was evidently preserved with great care.

There was, it seemed, in that neighborhood, what was called a manual labor boarding school, lately set up by the Methodists, of which religious sect the boy's _ mother was a zealous member. This school was principally designed for the instruction of those of limited means, who, by laboring a certain number of hours in the day, might acquire, along with their learning, some mechanical trade, and at the same time diminish the cost of their board and instruction. This cost, even without such reduction, did not much exceed the moderate sum of a hundred dollars a year. But though, by great economy, my benefactress had