Page:The White Slave, or Memoirs of a Fugitive.djvu/99

 I could not marry — alas, poor Cassy! — and become the father of a family, with the fond hope, that when age should overtake me, I might still find pleasure and support, in the kindness of children and the sympathy of a wife. My children might be snatched from the arms of their mother, and sold to the slave-trader; the mother might be sent to keep them company, — and I be left old, desolate, uncomforted. Motives such as these, motives which strengthen the freeman's arm and cheer his heart, were unfelt by me. I labored; — but it was only because I feared the lash. The want of willingness unnerved me, and every stroke cost a new effort.

It is even true, that major Thornton's humanity, or to speak more correctly, his sense of his own interest, while it preserved his servants from the miseries of hunger and nakedness, at the same time, exposed those among them, whom slavery and ignorance had not completely brutalized, to other and more excruciating miseries. Had we been but half fed and half clothed, like the servants on several of the neighboring plantations, we should, like them, have enjoyed the excitement of plunder. We should have found some exercise for our ingenuity, and some object about which to interest ourselves, in plans and stratagems for eking out our short allowance by the aid of theft.

As it was, stealing was but little practised at Oakland. The inducement was too small, and the risk too great, — for detection was certain to result in being sold. Money was no object to us; we could only spend it on food and clothes, and of these we had enough already. Whiskey was the only luxury we wanted; and we could make enough to purchase that, without the necessity of theft. Mr Thornton allowed each of us a little piece of ground. That was customary; — but what was quite contrary to custom, he allowed us time to cultivate it. He endeavored to stimulate our industry by the promise of buying all we could produce, not at a mere nominal price, as was the fashion on other plantations, but at its-full value.

I am sorry to say it, but it is not the less true, that major Thornton's people, like all slaves who have the means and the opportunity, were generally drunkards. Our master