This house belonged to a Northern “mudsill,” who kept a grocery, and owned the woman, who was the mother of five children, of whom he was the father.  The older two he had sold, one at a time, as they became saleable or got in his way.  On the sale of the first, the mother “took on so that he was obliged to flog her almost to death before she gave up.”  But he had made her understand that their children were to be sold, at his convenience, and that he “would not have more than three little niggers about the house at one time.”

After that first lesson she had been “reasonable.”

Our hostess, a Kentucky lady, used to lament the loss of two boys—­“two of the beautifulest boys!”

They were the sons of her bachelor uncle, who had had a passion for Liza, one of his father’s slaves, a tall, handsome quadroon, who rejected his suit and was in love with Jo, a fellow slave.  To punish both, the young master had Jo tied up and lashed until he fainted, while Liza was held so that she must witness the torture, until insensibility came to her relief.  This was done three times, when Jo was sold, and Liza herself bound to the whipping-post, and lashed until she yielded, and became the mother of those two beautiful boys.

“But,” added her biographer, “she never smiled after Jo was sold, took consumption and died when her youngest boy was two months old.  They were the beautifulest boys I ever laid eyes on, and uncle sot great store by them.  He couldn’t bear to have them out of his sight, and always said he would give them to me.  He would have done it, I know, if he had made a will; but he took sick sudden, raving crazy, and never got his senses for one minute.  It often took three men to hold him on the bed.  He thought he saw Jo and Liza, and died cursing and raving.”

She paused to wipe away a tear, and added:  “The boys were sold down South.  Maybe your way, up North, is best, after all.  I never knew a cruel master die happy.  They are sure to be killed, or die dreadful!”

She had an old, rheumatic cook, Martha, who seldom left her basement kitchen, except when she went to her Baptist meeting, but for hours and hours she crooned heart-breaking melodies of that hope within her, of a better and a happier world.

She had a severe attack of acute inflammation of the eyelids, which forcibly closed her eyes, and kept them closed; then she refused to work.

Her wages, one hundred and seventy-five dollars a year, were paid to her owner, a woman, and these went on; so her employer sent for her owner, and I, as an abolitionist, was summoned to the conference, that I might learn to pity the sorrows of mistresses, and understand the deceitfulness of slaves.

The injured owner sat in the shaded parlor, in a blue-black satin dress, that might almost have stood upright without assistance from the flesh or bones inside; with the dress was combined a mass of lace and jewelry that represented a large amount of money, and the mass as it sat there, and as I recall it, has made costly attire odious.