mother, wife, and children behind.  You will not wonder that the man required a little judicious soothing under such circumstances, and you will also, I hope, admire the humanity of the sale of his wife and children by the owner who was going to take him to Alabama, because they would be incumbrances rather than otherwise down there.  If Mr. K——­ did not do this after he knew that the man was his, then Mr. ——­ gave him to be carried down to the South after his wife and children were sold to remain in Georgia.  I do not know which was the real transaction, for I have not had the heart to ask; but you will easily imagine which of the two cases I prefer believing.

When I saw Mr. ——­ after this most wretched story became known to me in all its details, I appealed to him for his own soul’s sake not to commit so great a cruelty.  Poor Joe’s agony while remonstrating with his master was hardly greater than mine while arguing with him upon this bitter piece of inhumanity—­how I cried, and how I adjured, and how all my sense of justice and of mercy and of pity for the poor wretch, and of wretchedness at finding myself implicated in such a state of things, broke in torrents of words from my lips and tears from my eyes!  God knows such a sorrow at seeing anyone I belonged to commit such an act was indeed a new and terrible experience to me, and it seemed to me that I was imploring Mr. ——­ to save himself, more than to spare these wretches.  He gave me no answer whatever, and I have since thought that the intemperate vehemence of my entreaties and expostulations perhaps deserved that he should leave me as he did without one single word of reply; and miserable enough I remained.  Towards evening, as I was sitting alone, my children having gone to bed, Mr. O——­ came into the room.  I had but one subject in my mind; I had not been able to eat for it.  I could hardly sit still for the nervous distress which every thought of these poor people filled me with.  As he sat down looking over some accounts, I said to him, ‘Have you seen Joe this afternoon, Mr. O——?’ (I give you our conversation as it took place.) ’Yes, ma’am; he is a great deal happier than he was this morning.’  ‘Why, how is that?’ asked I eagerly.  ’Oh, he is not going to Alabama.  Mr. K——­ heard that he had kicked up a fuss about it (being in despair at being torn from one’s wife and children is called kicking up a fuss; this is a sample of overseer appreciation of human feelings), and said that if the fellow wasn’t willing to go with him, he did not wish to be bothered with any niggers down there who were to be troublesome, so he might stay behind.’  ’And does Psyche know this?’ ‘Yes, ma’am, I suppose so.’  I drew a long breath; and whereas my needle had stumbled through the stuff I was sewing for an hour before, as if my fingers could not guide it, the regularity and rapidity of its evolutions were now quite edifying.  The man was for the present safe, and I remained silently