for punishment. When any one wanted a slave whipped he would send a note
to that effect with the servant to the trader. Any petty offense on the
part of a slave was sufficient to subject the offender to this brutal
treatment. Owners who affected culture and refinement preferred to send
a servant to the yard for punishment to inflicting it themselves. It
saved them trouble, they said, and possibly a slight wear and tear of
feeling. For this service the owner was charged a certain sum for each
slave, and the earnings of the traders from this source formed a very
large part of the profits of his business. The yard I was in had a
regular whipping post to which they tied the slave, and gave him
"nine-and-thirty," as it was called, meaning thirty-nine lashes as hard
as they could lay it on. Men were stripped of their shirts in
preparation for the whipping, and women had to take off their dresses
from the shoulders to the waist. These whippings were not so severe as
when the slaves were stripped entirely of their clothes, as was
generally the case on the plantations where slaves were owned by the
dozen. I saw many cases of whipping while I was in the yard. Sometimes I
was so frightened that I trembled violently, for I had never seen
anything like it before.

* * * * *

SOLD IN THE MARKET.

I was only in the yard a short time before I was bought by one George
Reid who lived in Richmond. He had no wife, but an old lady kept house
for him and his three sons. At this time he had a place in the
postoffice, but soon after I came there he lost it. He then moved into
the country upon a farm of about one thousand acres, enclosed by a cedar
hedge. The house was a plain frame structure upon a stone basement and