Minnie's Sacrifice by Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
page 12 of 117 (10%)
page 12 of 117 (10%)
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The next Summer Mr. Le Croix took a journey to the North, taking Louis
and Camilla with him. He found a very pleasant family school in New England; and having made suitable arrangements, he left Louis in the care of the matron, whose kindness and attentions soon won the child's heart; and before he left the North, Louis seemed perfectly contented with his new home. Camilla was delighted with her tour; the constant companion of her father, she visited with him every place of amusement or interest they could find. She was much pleased with the factories; and watched with curious eyes the intelligent faces of the operatives, as they plied with ready fingers their daily tasks. Sometimes she would contrast their appearance with the laborers she had seen wending their way into their lowly huts; and then her face would grow sober even to sadness. A puzzled expression would flit over her countenance, as if she were trying to solve a problem which was inexplicable to her. One day on the hunt for some new excitement, her father passed down Tremont St., and saw advertised, in large letters, on the entrance to Tremont Temple, "Anti Slavery Meeting;" and never having been in such a place before he entered, impelled by a natural curiosity to hear what could be said against a system in which he had been involved from his earliest recollections, without taking the pains to examine it. The first speaker was a colored man. This rather surprised him. He had been accustomed to colored men all the days of his life; and as such, he had known some of them to be intelligent, shrewd, and wide awake; but this was a new experience. The man had been a slave, and recounted in burning words the wrongs which had been heaped upon him. He told that he had been a husband and a father: that his wife had possessed (for a |
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