“As to the enactment which made the Hebrew servant a slave for life, thus dooming even one of the covenant people to perpetual bondage, if he had married in slavery, I see in it several things most clearly.

“You will have noticed that in every case in which a Hebrew was made a servant, poverty was the ground of it.  ‘If thy brother be waxen poor,’ he could sell himself, either to a Hebrew or to a resident alien.  He and his children could also be taken for debt.  This seems to us oppressive.

“Let a family among us be reduced, from any cause, to a condition in which they cannot maintain themselves, and what follows?  The children find employment, some of them in families, in various kinds of domestic service.  Indented apprenticeships in this commonwealth are within the memory of all who are forty or fifty years of age.  We remember the very frequent advertisements:  ’One cent reward.  Ran away from the subscriber, an indented apprentice,’ etc.  The descriptions of such fugitives, all for the sake of absolving the master from liability for the absconding boy, and sometimes the hunt that was made, with dogs to scent his tracks, when his return was desired, are far within the memory of the oldest inhabitant.

“In Israel, this descent of a family from a prosperous to a decayed state, and the consequent servitude, were used by the Most High to cultivate some of the best feelings of our nature.  It touched the finest sensibilities of the soul.  Let me read from the fifteenth of Deuteronomy:—­

    “’And if thy brother, an Hebrew man or an Hebrew woman, be sold unto
    thee, and serve thee six years, then in the seventh year thou shalt
    let him go free from thee.

    “’And when thou sendest him out free from thee, thou shalt not let
    him go away empty.

“’Thou shalt furnish him liberally out of thy flock, and out of thy floor, and out of thy wine-press:  of that wherewith the Lord thy God hath blessed thee thou shalt give unto him.  And thou shalt remember that thou wast a bondman in the land of Egypt, and the Lord thy God redeemed thee:  therefore I command thee this thing to-day.

    “’And if it shall be, if he say unto thee, I will not go away from
    thee; because he loveth thee and thine house, because he is well
    with thee,

    “’Then thou shalt take an awl and thrust it through his ear unto the
    door, and he shall be thy servant forever.  And also with thy
    maid-servant thou shalt do likewise.

“’It shall not seem hard unto thee when thou sendest him away free from thee:  for he hath been worth a doubled hired servant to thee, in serving thee six years; and the Lord thy God shall bless thee in all that thou doest.’

“Is not this very beautiful and touching, Mrs. North?”

She said nothing, but hid her face in her little babe’s neck, pretending to kiss it.  But Mr. North wiped his eyes.  “There is not much barbarism in that,” said he.