The history of that unfortunate beauty may be comprehended in a few words, leaving the reader to draw the details from his imagination.  Her mother was a fine mulatto slave, with about a quarter Indian blood.  She was the mistress of a celebrated gentleman in Charleston, who ranked among the first families, to whom she bore three beautiful children, the second of which is the one before us.  Her father, although he could not acknowledge her, prized her highly, and unquestionably never intended that she should be considered a slave.  Alice, for such was her name, felt the shame of her position.  She knew her father, and was proud to descant upon his honor and rank, yet must either associate with negroes or nobody, for it would be the death of caste for a white woman, however mean, to associate with her.  At the age of sixteen she became attached to a young gentleman of high standing but moderate means, and lived with him as his mistress.  Her father, whose death is well known, died suddenly away from home.  On administering on his estate, it proved that instead of being wealthy, as was supposed, he was insolvent, and the creditors insisting upon the children being sold.  Alice was purchased by compromise with the administrator, and retained by her lord under a mortgage, the interest and premium on which he had regularly paid for more than four years.  Now that he was about to get married, the excuse of the mortgage was the best pretext in the world to get rid of her.

The Captain turned from the scene with feelings that left deep impressions upon his mind, and that afternoon took his departure for his Scottish home.

Time passed heavily at the jail, and day after day Manuel awaited his fate with anxiety.  At every tap of the prison-bell he would spring to the door and listen, asserting that he heard the consul’s voice in every passing sound.  Day after day the consul would call upon him and quiet his fears, reassuring him that he was safe and should not be sold as a slave.  At length, on the seventeenth day of May, after nearly two months’ imprisonment, the glad news was received that Manuel Pereira was not to be sold, according to the statutes, but to be released upon payment of all costs, &c. &c., and immediately sent beyond the limits of the State.  We leave it to the reader’s fancy, to picture the scene of joy on the reception of the news in the “stewards’ cell.”

The consul lost no time in arranging his affairs for him, and at five o’clock on the afternoon of the 17th of May, 1852, Manuel Pereira, a poor, shipwrecked mariner, who, by the dispensation of an all-wise Providence, was cast upon the shores of South Carolina, and imprisoned because hospitality to him was “contrary to law,” was led forth, pale and emaciated, by two constables, thrust into a closely covered vehicle, and driven at full speed to the steamboat then awaiting to depart for New York.  This is but a faint glimpse, of the suffering to which colored stewards are subjected in the Charleston jail.