Page:The White Slave, or Memoirs of a Fugitive.djvu/418

 What attention they had paid to this adjuration we have seen. They were infamous scoundrels, no doubt. Who questions it? Yet they had their temptations. Twenty-five thousand dollars apiece; to Gilmore, the possession of a beautiful girl; to Grip Curtis, the gratification of his furious revenge as well upon the mother as on the son. And it was only three persons that they sought to reduce to slavery. Pray how much worse were they than so many other of your northern Gilmores and Curtises, who — without any direct and positive temptation at all, beyond the uncertain hope of office, or of currying favor with southern customers — are ready to do their best towards the making and keeping of three millions of slaves; even to the hunting down and delivering up to the pretended claimants — without stopping to inquire whether the claim is any better founded than that set up by Gilmore and Curtis to Eliza — any panting fugitive, man, woman,-or child, who may take refuge among them? Any man ready to do that — any man who does not blush at the very thought of it — what is he but a Gilmore and Grip Curtis in his soul?





Eliza! Poor child indeed! Even at that distance, separated by the whole length of the city, Montgomery's heart felt the wild beating of hers, knew that it was her hour of need, and would allow us to detain him no longer. Rescue her he must and would.

Imagine, you who can, the terror and misery of that young girl, going trustingly to the house of her father's friend, and there meeting a man like Mr Grip Curtis, of whose faithlessness and brutality she had already had some experience in Boston, and being told by him — which statement Mr Gilmore con-