comes up,--for Mr. Nicholson won't take such an uncertain
piece of goods as you have showed yourself to be,--or you can
go South. There's a trader here ready to take you right off.
I'll give you till tomorrow morning to make up your mind."

"I'll go South," said the poor girl, the next morning.
"I can't bear ever to see Miss Tilda again." And she settled herself
down to her fate. She knew her life of bondage would be hard there,
and she would not have much chance of getting her freedom.
But it was better than the mortification of going back.

So she was sold to Mr. Pervis, the slave-trader. Mr. Pervis made
about fifty purchases in Baltimore and the vicinity, and then
organizing his gang he started for the South. Oh, what a different
journey from that which Tidy had intended when she left home.
A thousand miles South, into the very heart of slavery's dominions,
with a company of coarse, stupid, filthy, wretched creatures,
such as she never would have willingly associated with at home,
so much more delicately had she been reared. Many of these were
field-hands sold to go to the cotton plantations,--sold for "rascality."

Do you know what that means? You think it is ugliness.
But no; it is a DISEASE. It is a droll sort of malady,
to which a learned Louisiana doctor has given a singular name,
which I can't spell, and which you wouldn't know how to pronounce;
but the symptoms I can describe. Where a slave is attacked
with this disease, he acts in a very stupid and careless manner,
and does a great deal of mischief, breaking, abusing, and wasting
every thing he can lay his hands on. He tears his clothes,
throws away food, cuts up plants in the field, breaks his tools,