Page:The White Slave, or Memoirs of a Fugitive.djvu/353

 a particular interest, she would do credit to any body's choice. I say this as both connoisseur and amateur in these matters, and indeed professionally, as a dealer in the article — in all which respects I reckon my opinion to be worth something. The boy was a fine boy too. I wonder who his father was! Fact," said he, looking me full in the face, with a comical sort of an air, "I shouldn't be surprised if there was some resemblance!"

Perceiving, however, that his attempted jocularity did not suit the temper of my mind, and his keen glance detecting, probably, the tear that stood in my eye, he modified his tone a little.

"They do, sometimes, get a tight hold of our hearts. It is all very well for us to lord it over the men, as if they were brutes, monkeys, inferior animals; but the women are very often too much for us. Why, I have known, before now, the most fierce, brutal, savage fellow, who feared neither God nor man, made a complete baby of — as manageable as a tame bear who dances to order — by some little black or yellow girl of fifteen or twenty, who has thus contrived to play the Queen Esther on the plantation, and to stand often between the fury of her lord and master and the backs of her dingy kindred. This is one of its alleviations not much dwelt upon by those who undertake to apologize for slavery; but which, perhaps, does more than every thing else put together to infuse a certain modicum of kindly feeling into the relation of master and slave. That is the way that nature takes to bring both master and slave to their natural equality. Cupid, with his bow and arrows, is the sworn enemy of all castes and patrician distinctions.

"Pray, sir, did you ever read Edwards's History of the West Indies?"

"Yes, I have."

"Then, perhaps, you recollect an ode inserted in it, addressed to the Sable Venus. Edwards, you know, was a Jamaica planter, a grave historian, an advocate