would be reported to my grandmother, made him bear this treatment for many months.  He was a crafty man, and resorted to many means to accomplish his purposes.  Sometimes he had stormy, terrific ways, that made his victims tremble; sometimes he assumed a gentleness that he thought must surely subdue.  Of the two, I preferred his stormy moods, although they left me trembling.  He tried his utmost to corrupt the pure principles my grandmother had instilled.  He peopled my young mind with unclean images, such as only a vile monster could think of.  I turned from him with disgust and hatred.  But he was my master.  I was compelled to live under the same roof with him—­where I saw a man forty years my senior daily violating the most sacred commandments of nature.  He told me I was his property; that I must be subject to his will in all things.  My soul revolted against the mean tyranny.  But where could I turn for protection?  No matter whether the slave girl be as black as ebony or as fair as her mistress.  In either case, there is no shadow of law to protect her from insult, from violence, or even from death; all these are inflicted by fiends who bear the shape of men.  The mistress, who ought to protect the helpless victim, has no other feelings towards her but those of jealousy and rage.  The degradation, the wrongs, the vices, that grow out of slavery, are more than I can describe.  They are greater than you would willingly believe.  Surely, if you credited one half the truths that are told you concerning the helpless millions suffering in this cruel bondage, you at the north would not help to tighten the yoke.  You surely would refuse to do for the master, on your own soil, the mean and cruel work which trained bloodhounds and the lowest class of whites do for him at the south.

Every where the years bring to all enough of sin and sorrow; but in slavery the very dawn of life is darkened by these shadows.  Even the little child, who is accustomed to wait on her mistress and her children, will learn, before she is twelve years old, why it is that her mistress hates such and such a one among the slaves.  Perhaps the child’s own mother is among those hated ones.  She listens to violent outbreaks of jealous passion, and cannot help understanding what is the cause.  She will become prematurely knowing in evil things.  Soon she will learn to tremble when she hears her master’s footfall.  She will be compelled to realize that she is no longer a child.  If God has bestowed beauty upon her, it will prove her greatest curse.  That which commands admiration in the white woman only hastens the degradation of the female slave.  I know that some are too much brutalized by slavery to feel the humiliation of their position; but many slaves feel it most acutely, and shrink from the memory of it.  I cannot tell how much I suffered in the presence of these wrongs, nor how I am still pained by the retrospect.  My master met me at every turn, reminding me that I belonged to him, and swearing by heaven