miss, being installed as housekeeper to papa, and for the first time in her life being queen—­at least so she fancied—­of all she surveyed, went to work searching every cranny, and prying into every drawer, and woe betide anything which did not come up to my idea of neat housekeeping.  When I chanced across the drawer of scraps I at once condemned them to the flames.  Such a place of disorder could not be tolerated in my dominions.  I never thought of the contingency of papa’s shirts, etc., wanting mending; my oversight, however, did not prevent the natural catastrophe of clothes wearing out, and one day papa brought me a garment to mend, ‘Oh,’ said I, tossing it carelessly aside, ‘that hole is too big to darn.’

“‘Certainly, my dear,’ he replied, ’but you can put a piece in.  Look in such a drawer, and you will find plenty to patch with.’

“But behold the drawer was empty.  Happily, I had commuted the sentence of burning to that of distribution to the slaves, one of whom furnished me the piece, and mended the garment ten times better than I could have done.  So I was let to go unwhipped of justice for that misdemeanor, and perhaps that was the lesson which burnt into my soul.  My story doesn’t sound Southerny, does it?  Well, here is something more.  During that summer, father had me taught to spin and weave negro cloth.  Don’t suppose I ever did anything worth while; only it was one of his maxims:  ’Never lose an opportunity of learning what is useful.  If you never need the knowledge, it will be no burden to have it; and if you should, you will be thankful to have it.’  So I had to use my delicate fingers now and then to shell corn, a process which sometimes blistered them, and was sent into the field to pick cotton occasionally.  Perhaps I am indebted partially to this for my life-long detestation of slavery, as it brought me in close contact with these unpaid toilers.”

Doubtless she had many a talk with these “unpaid toilers,” and learned from them the inner workings of a system which her friends would fain have taught her to view as fair and merciful.

Children are born without prejudice, and the young children of Southern planters never felt or made any difference between their white and colored playmates.  The instances are many of their revolt and indignation when first informed that there must be a difference.  So that there is nothing singular in the fact that Sarah Grimke, to use her own words, early felt such an abhorrence of the whole institution of slavery, that she was sure it was born in her.  Several of her brothers and sisters felt the same.  But she differed from other children in the respect that her sensibilities were so acute, her heart so tender, that she made the trials of the slaves her own, and grieved that she could neither share nor mitigate them.  So deeply did she feel for them that she was frequently found in some retired spot weeping, after one of the slaves had been punished.  She remembered that once, when she was not more than four or five years old, she accidentally witnessed the terrible whipping of a servant woman.  As soon as she could escape from the house, she rushed out sobbing, and half an hour afterwards her nurse found her on the wharf, begging a sea captain to take her away to some place where such things were not done.