Page:The White Slave, or Memoirs of a Fugitive.djvu/40

 bade me go about my business, having first assured me, that in the course of the day, he would see Mr Stubbs and inquire into the matter. This was the last 1 heard from colonel Moore. That same evening, Mr Stubbs sent for me to his house, and having tied me to a tree before his door, gave me forty lashes, and bade me complain at the house again, if I dared. "It's a hard case~indeed," he added, "if I can't lick a cursed nigger's insolence out of him, without being obliged to give an account of it!"

Insolence! — the tyrant's ready plea!

If a poor slave has been whipped and miserably abused, and no other apology for it can be thought of, the rascal's 'insolence' can be always pleaded, — and when pleaded, is enough in every slave-holder's estimation, to excuse and justify any brutality. The slightest word, or look, or action, that seems to indicate the slave's sense of any injustice that is done him, is denounced as insolence, and is punished with the most unrelenting severity.

This was the second time I had experienced the discipline of the lash; — but I did not find the second dose any more agreeable than the first. A blow is esteemed among freemen, the very highest of indignities; and low as their oppressors have sunk them, it is esteemed an indignity among slaves. Besides — as strange as some people may think it — a twisted cowhide, laid on by the hand of a strong man, does actually inflict a good deal of pain, especially if every blow brings blood.

I will leave it to the reader's own feelings to imagine, what no words can sufficiently describe, the bitterness of that man's misery, who is every hour in danger of experiencing this indignity and this torture. When he has wrought — up his fancy, — and let him thank God, from the very bottom of his heart, that in his case, it is only fancy, — to a lively idea of that misery, he will have taken the first step, towards gaining some notion, however faint and inadequate, of what it is, to be a slave!

I had now learned a lesson, which every slave early learns, — I found that I did not enjoy even the privilege of complaining; and that the only way to escape a reiteration of injustice, was to submit in silence to the first infliction