Page:The White Slave, or Memoirs of a Fugitive.djvu/417

 parish judge and three fourths of the police jury to the manumission of Eliza, as the law required in case of slaves under thirty years of age, (that respectable body not thinking the circumstance that she was his only daughter and child a sufficient motive to justify it,) — proceeded to state, that he had sent her to be educated at Boston, with the hope, intention, and desire thereby to make her free which he declared her to be, so far as it was lawfully in his power to make her so. But in case the law should, notwithstanding his anxiety to divest himself of it, reserve to him and his estate any property in, or right to, the services of Eliza until her attaining to thirty years of age, then, in that case, he devised and bequeathed those services to Cassy, — describing her as a free woman, manumitted many years since by himself, and since employed as his housekeeper, — in full confidence that, as she had so long acted the part of a mother towards Eliza, she would continue to do the same.

This was all the mention made of Gassy in the will; nor was there any mention of Montgomery, beyond a declaration of his freedom; but from a separate paper, contained in the parcel, it appeared that Mr Curtis had deposited the sum of twenty thousand dollars with a London banker, payable, in case of his death, to Montgomery, for the joint benefit of himself and his mother — a contrivance resorted to, apparently, for defeating the stringent restrictions of the Louisiana law on the power of devising property by will in the case of persons leaving near relations. The parcel also contained an official copy of a formal act of emancipation, executed many years ago, in favor of Gassy, before a notary public; Mr Gilmore being one of the witnesses. The will wound up with a most solemn adjuration to the two executors to watch sedulously over the welfare of the testator's daughter, whose guardians, during the continuance of her minority, they were declared to be.