Page:The White Slave, or Memoirs of a Fugitive.djvu/83

 if they were merely spectators. They laughed, and talked, and jested with one another with as much gaiety as any of the company. An apologist for tyranny, would no doubt, rejoice in such a spectacle, and would be emboldened to argue, that after all being sold at public auction is not so terrible a thing, as some weak people are apt to imagine. The argument would be quite as sound as any that the slave-holder ever uses; and for ingenuity and conclusiveness, deserves to be compared with that of the philosopher, who having seen through the grates of a prison, a parcel of condemned criminals laughing and jesting together, concluded that the expectation of being hung, must have something in it very exhilarating.

The truth is, that the human mind, in its eager, though too often unavailing struggle after happiness, will still make the most of its means; — and even in the valley of despair, or under the ribs of death itself, still strives to create some matter of enjoyment. Even the slave will sing at his task; he can laugh too, though he find himself sold like an ox in the market. The tyrant discovers that all his wrongs and oppressions have not been able to extinguish in the soul of his victim, the capability of enjoyment; and he points you to these outbursts of a nature not yet totally subdued, and dares to boast of the happiness he causes!

But to be sold, is not always a laughing matter. The first bargain which the auctioneer offered to the company, was a man apparently about thirty, with a. fine, open, prepossessing countenance. He had no expectation of being sold, till the moment he was placed upon the table; for it appeared that his master who lived near the city, had lured him to town under the delusive pretext of an intention to hire him out to some one of the citizens. When the poor fellow found that he was actually to be sold, he was seized with such a trembling that he could scarcely support himself. He shook from head to foot; and his face indicated the greatest terror and distress. The two principal bidders, — and they seemed to enter into a pretty warm competition, — were a gentleman of the neighborhood, who appeared to know the poor fellow on sale, and a dashing, buckish young man, who, it was said, was a slave-trader from South