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We are constantly told, has she not heard it? that the slave at the South is a mere "chattel," and that a slave-child is bought and sold as recklessly as a calf, and that a parting between a slave-mother and her children, sold and separated for life, is an occurrence as familiar as the separation of animals and their young, and no more regarded by slave-holders than divorcements in the barn-yard.
No threat of a dark closet ever frightened a free child so much as the threat of being sold to a Southern plantation terrifies the slave-child of Kentucky. Lewis walked slowly toward the kitchen, to see Aunt Sally. It was to her he used to go with all his troubles, and sometimes she scolded, and sometimes she listened.
The royal lady made of the Hebrew slave-child an Egyptian gentleman. Yet, although his face was shaved, and outwardly he appeared to be an Egyptian, at heart he remained a Hebrew. One day, when he was grown, Moses went slumming among his own people to look at their burdens, and he spied an Egyptian smiting a Hebrew. He was so overcome by passion at this scene that he killed the man on the spot.
One is, that if God so loved a humble slave-child, and took such pains to bring her to himself, it is our privilege to feel the same sympathy and love for this poor despised race.
The chances of a slave-child surviving were not good enough for a free woman to try the experiment, and as life in any case was of little value, it was considered best that the infant should be put out of the way.
But, nevertheless, he is a slave-holder in no other sense than was Abraham. Did Abraham have his slave-household circumcised? Every Southern planter may have his slave-household baptized. I baptized, not long since, a slave-child, the master and mistress offering it to God. What was done in the parlor might be done with divine approbation on every plantation.
'Tis de yoke de Heavenly Massa puts on yer neck, and ye can't take it off nohow till he ondoes it hissef wid his own hand. Ye mus' b'ar it, and say, De will ob de bressed Lord be done." But, trying as this separation was, it proved to be the first link in that chain of loving-kindnesses by which this little slave-child was to be drawn towards God.
Ward Beecher, the great Abolition apostle, fairly outdoes the earlier eccentricities of Spurgeon; every trick of stage effect such as the sudden display of a white slave-child is freely employed in the pulpit of Plymouth Church, and each successful "point" is rewarded by audible murmurs of applause. One fact stamps the man very sufficiently.
The slave-child has evidently reached the woman, perhaps the hungering mother's heart, in her mistress; and the sorrow of the woman, for alas! she is a leper's wife, has touched the servant's heart.
Two white girls and a black girl were made to practise running with their arms interlocked, and one day, as our friend came in sight, they were pushed out to astonish her with one instance of white girls hugging a negro slave-child. No doubt our friend, on seeing these three together, soliloquized as follows:
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