Page:The White Slave, or Memoirs of a Fugitive.djvu/44

 and her beauty, vivacity, and good humor, made every day a stronger impression upon me. I found myself in love before I had thought of it; and presently I discovered that my affection was not unrequited.

Cassy was one of nature's children, and she had never learned those arts of coquetry, often as skilfully practised by the maid as the mistress, by which courtships are protracted. We loved; and before long, we talked of marriage. Cassy consulted her mistress; and the answer was favorable. Mrs Moore listened with equal readiness to me. Women are never happier, than when they have an opportunity to dabble in match-making; nor does even the humble condition of the parties quite deprive the business of its fascination.

It was determined that our marriage, should be a little festival among the servants. The coming Sunday was fixed on as the day; and a Methodist clergyman, who happened to have wandered into the neighborhood, readily undertook to perform the ceremony. This part of his office, I suppose, he would have performed for any body; but he undertook it the more readily for us, because Cassy while at Baltimore, had become a member of the Methodist Society.

I was well pleased with all this; for it seemed to give to our union something of that solemnity, which properly belonged to it.-In general, marriage among American slaves, is treated as a matter of very little moment. It is a mere temporary union, contracted without ceremony, not recognized by the laws, little or not at all regarded by the masters, and of course, often but lightly esteemed by the parties. The recollection that the husband may, any day, be sold into Louisiana, and the wife into Georgia, holds out but a slight inducement to draw tight the bonds of connubial intercourse; and the certainty that the fruits of their marriage, the children of their love, are to be born slaves, and reared to all the privations and calamities of hopeless servitude, is enough to strike a damp into the hearts of the fondest couple. Slaves yield to the impulses of nature, and propagate a race of slaves; but save in a few rare instances, servitude is as fatal to domestic love as to all the