United States or Lithuania ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
"You shall be freed," she observed; "but remember you will have to work as hard as you have ever before done, to repay the Confradia the money they have advanced for your emancipation." These were not exactly her words, but what she said was to this effect.
Those of the same tribe or nation find each other out, and form a sort of club or association, called a Confradia. They generally hold their meetings in the suburbs on a Sunday afternoon. At the time I speak of, there was an old slave-woman who had lived in a family for nearly fifty years, and who was the acknowledged queen of the Mandingoes.
Her mistress had given her a silver sceptre, and the young ladies of the family would lend her jewels, artificial flowers, and other ornaments; bedecked in which, on certain days, she would be carried off by her subjects in great state, her sceptre borne before her, to the house of the Confradia, where a throne was prepared to receive her.
The sceptre-bearer stepped out with her majesty's insignia of office in his arms, looking back as he did so to ascertain that the queen was following. Her people shouted, the palanquin-bearers moved on, the band struck up a negro sort of "God save the Queen," and away they all went towards the quarters of the Confradia. I followed to see the end of the ceremony.
Others she advised to bear their ill-treatment patiently, and to endeavour, by zeal and attention to the wishes of their masters, to soften their tempers, and to gain their good-will; but there were two or three who had been treated so barbarously and unjustly, that she promised them that the Confradia should make every effort to purchase their freedom.
Word Of The Day