of this pretence.  The man who robs you every day, is, forsooth, quite too tender-hearted ever to cuff or kick you!  True, he can snatch your money, but he does it gently lest he should hurt you.  He can empty your pockets without qualms, but if your stomach is empty, it cuts him to the quick.  He can make you work a life time without pay, but loves you too well to let you go hungry.  He fleeces you of your rights with a relish, but is shocked if you work bareheaded in summer, or in winter without warm stockings.  He can make you go without your liberty, but never without a shirt.  He can crush, in you, all hope of bettering your condition, by vowing that you shall die his slave, but though he can coolly torture your feelings, he is too compassionate to lacerate your back—­he can break your heart, but he is very tender of your skin.  He can strip you of all protection and thus expose you to all outrages, but if you are exposed to the weather, half clad and half sheltered, how yearn his tender bowels!  What! slaveholders talk of treating men well, and yet not only rob them of all they get, and as fast as they get it, but rob them of themselves, also; their very hands and feet, all their muscles, and limbs, and senses, their bodies and minds, their time and liberty and earnings, their free speech and rights of conscience, their right to acquire knowledge, and property, and reputation;—­and yet they, who plunder them of all these, would fain make us believe that their soft hearts ooze out so lovingly toward their slaves that they always keep them well housed and well clad, never push them too hard in the field, never make their dear backs smart, nor let their dear stomachs get empty.

But there is no end to these absurdities.  Are slaveholders dunces, or do they take all the rest of the world to be, that they think to bandage our eyes with such thin gauzes?  Protesting their kind regard for those whom they hourly plunder of all they have and all they get!  What! when they have seized their victims, and annihilated all their rights, still claim to be the special guardians of their happiness!  Plunderers of their liberty, yet the careful suppliers of their wants?  Robbers of their earnings, yet watchful sentinels round their interests, and kind providers for their comfort?  Filching all their time, yet granting generous donations for rest and sleep?  Stealing the use of their muscles, yet thoughtful of their ease?  Putting them under drivers, yet careful that they are not hard-pushed?  Too humane forsooth to stint the stomachs of their slaves, yet force their minds to starve, and brandish over them pains and penalties, if they dare to reach forth for the smallest crumb of knowledge, even a letter of the alphabet!