a dozen:  at last she agreed.  She lived near the river side, and obtained plenty of work.  So anxious was she to obtain her freedom, that she worked nearly all her time, days and nights, and Sundays.  She found, however, she gained nothing by working on Sundays, and therefore left it off.  She paid her master punctually her weekly hire, and also something towards her freedom, for which he gave her receipts.  A good stewardess was wanted for a steamboat on the Mississippi; she was hired for the place at $30 a month, which is the usual salary; she also had liberty to sell apples and oranges on board; and, commonly, the passengers give from twenty-five cents to a dollar to a stewardess who attends them well.  Her entire incoming, wages and all, amounted to about sixty dollars a month.  She remained at this employment till she had paid the entire sum of $ 1,200 for her freedom.

As soon as she obtained her free papers, she left the steamboat, thinking she could find her sister Charlotte.  Her first two trials were unsuccessful; but on the third attempt she found her at work in the cane-field.  She showed her sister’s master her own free papers, and told him how she had bought herself; he said that, if her sister would pay him as much as she paid her master, she might go too.  They agreed, and he gave her a pass.  The two sisters went on board a steamboat, and worked together for the wages of one, till they had saved the entire $1,200 for the freedom of the second sister.  The husband of Charlotte was dead; her children were left behind in the cotton and cane-fields; their master refuses to take less than $2,400 for them; their names and ages are as follows:  Zeno, about fifteen; Antoinette, about thirteen; Joseph, about eleven; and Josephine, about ten years old.  Of my other children, I only know that one, a girl, named Betsey, is a little way from Norfolk, in Virginia.  Her master, Mr. William Dixon, is willing to sell her for $500.

I do not know where any of my other four children are, nor whether they be dead or alive.  It will be very difficult to find them out:  for the names of slaves are commonly changed with every change of master:  they usually bear the name of the master to whom they belong at the time:  they have no family name of their own by which they can be traced.  Through this circumstance, and their ignorance of reading and writing, to which they are compelled by law, all trace between parents and children, who are separated from them in childhood, is lost in a few years.  When, therefore, a child is sold away from its mother, she feels that she is parting from it forever; there is little likelihood of her ever knowing what of good or evil befalls it.  The way of finding out a friend or relative who has been sold away for any length of time, or to any great distance, is to trace them, if possible, to one master after another, or if that cannot be done, to inquire about the neighborhood where they are supposed to be, until some one is found