She knew what going up the river meant. Mr. Turner owned a large
cotton plantation about twenty miles from Natchez, and the severest
punishment dreaded by his servants in the city was to be sent there.

Tom, the coachman, accompanied Tidy, bearing in his pocket a note
to the overseer of the plantation. Would you take a peep into
it before she, whom it most concerned, learned its contents?
It ran thus,--

"NATCHEZ, Wednesday, A. M. "DIOSSY,--

"Give this wench a hundred lashes with the long whip this afternoon.
Wash her down well, and when she is fit to work, put her into
the cotton field. "ABRAM TURNER."

Oh, let us weep, dear children, for the poor girl, who, for no crime
at all, not even a misdeed, was made to bare her tender skin to such
shameless cruelty. No friend was there to help her, to plead for her,
to deliver her from the relentless, violent hand of the wicked oppressor.
She was left all alone to her terrible suffering. Can we wonder
that she felt that even the Lord had forgotten her?

That night there was scarcely an inch of flesh from her neck
to her feet that was not torn, raw, and bleeding. The salt brine,
which is used to heal the wounds, although when first applied
it seems to aggravate the torture, was poured pitilessly
over her, and writhing with agony, fainting, and almost dead,
she was borne to a wretched hut, and laid on a hard pallet.
Three weeks she lay there, sick and helpless; but she cried unto
the Lord in her distress, and he heard her, and prepared to deliver her,