should be continually before me; for he well
knew that thought to be the main cause of my
estrangement from my father.

There was no one to support me through this
heavy trial. Mary Evans, indeed, was true;
she would twine her arms round me, drawing
me affectionately to her bosom, protesting an
eternal friendship; yet I felt at those times more
than ever, my isolation. Her nature was not my
nature; the drop of dark blood and the iron hand
of the law, had decreed our separation; her
pity might be as great and as good as the pity of
an angel; but it could not afford that blessed
consolation which arises from the possession of
a common nature liable to the same trials and
the same sufferings.

Do not imagine that this was merely a morbid
fancy of mine; its truth was too evident in the
ordinary intercourse of life. When Mary Evans
and Abel and I were sitting together, and he
talked in a bantering tone of some friends of
his who had fallen in love with us, his words
amounted to no more than familiar badinage, to
which the laughing retort of Mary Evans formed,
on her part, a fitting answer. But those same
words addressed to me were laden with
unutterable shame, bringing a burning blush to my
cheeks.

But the lash—ah me! the day of retribution had
come. While I was yet responsible for all household
matters, the ability to command had left me,
and the slaves knew it, as the horse knows an
unskilful rider. I dared not punish. The
thought of my own mother, and the knowledge
that I was ordering a creature of like nature
with myself to be lashed, tied my tongue and
held my hand. Things were often neglected,
and my father would receive no excuses for any
short-comings he discovered. I had the means
of punishment, he said, and he would summon
the overseer, and force me to give the order for
punishment. Sometimes in his irritation at what
he termed my stupid "nigger-worship," he would
strike me, even in the presence of Abel, with his
switch.

There was a clergyman, a Mr. Graham, a
neighbour of ours, who occasionally visited at
our house. He was an old man, towards whom
I entertained the strongest feelings of respect
and veneration; it was impossible not to be
attracted by the tenderness of his manner, and by
the strong but unobtrusive piety which marked
his demeanour. When I tell you that he held
slaves, you will in all probability smile at the
thought of his tenderness, and utterly deny his
piety. Yet he was not a hypocrite. I will
mention, by way of illustration, that memorable
instance of the great leader of the Evangelical
party in past days—the pious John Newton, of
Olney, successor of Whitfield, and intimate
friend of Cowper. Well, he was in his earlier
days a slave-trader, the master of a slave ship.
On board his vessel, as I have read, the negroes
were packed together like herrings, stifled, sick,
and broken-hearted, But, separated by a single
plank from his victims, the voice of their jailer
might be heard, day by day, conducting the
prayers of his ship's company, and joining them
in singing devout compositions of his own. He
experienced on his last voyage to Guinea—these
are his own words—"sweeter and more frequent
hours of Divine communion" than he had ever
elsewhere known. Even in his old age, long
after he had entered the Church, holding a
conspicuous position as a Christian minister,
honoured and revered by a large congregation,
he coldly and phlegmatically avowed his
participation in the slave trade; and to the last he
was little conscious of the heinousness of his
guilt.

Mr. Graham would have resisted as
indignantly any assertion that the negroes are the
intellectual and moral equals of the white race,
as he would have opposed the theory that
mankind at large have been developed from
monkeys.

Yet it was impossible for him to be harsh
or severe to any living creature. No trouble
was too great, if he could only alleviate pain and
suffering wherever they might exist. When
any slave chanced to be ill, he would watch
with the utmost solicitude at the bedside, speaking
the kindest words, and noting every change
which took place in the patient. An ordinary
observer would have marvelled at such devotion,
and would have felt the greatest admiration for
such conduct on the part of a man towards his
poorer fellows; but Mr. Graham never for a
moment entertained the idea that the sufferer
was bound to him by the bond of a co-equal
humanity. He would have acted—indeed I
have known him act—with the same tenderness
towards a poor dog which had been, by
accident, severely wounded. In his establishment,
both slaves and lower animals were equally
spoilt; but, as a matter of principle, he would
have no mere thought of denying that the lash
was, at times, necessary for the correction of
slaves, than he would have denied that it was
necessary for the correction of brute
creatures.

One day, in an agony of despair, I threw
myself at Mr. Graham's feet, and poured out all
my sorrow. His manner was very kind and
affectionate—but still that taint of blood! I
read the thought in his words of tender pity.
He evidently felt that there was some difference
in our respective natures—a radical defect
existing in mine, which demanded his deepest
sympathy. The same sort of conversation
might have taken place between us on the
supposition that some slight germ of insanity
existed in my mind, so slight that my reasoning
faculties were scarcely affected by it—so slight,
in short, that there was every hope the evil
might be overcome by healthy mental discipline
and strict watchfulness.

My feeling of estrangement towards my
father appeared to him unnatural, and not to
be accounted for by any ordinary cause. He
admitted that mine was a bitter trial; but yet
my father had done all that lay in his power
to lighten the burden. I had received the
blessing of a good education. I had been