wagons. It was a sorrowful sight. Some were praying, some crying, and
they all had a look of extreme wretchedness. It is an awful thing to a
Virginia slave to be sold for the Alabama and Mississippi country. I
have known some of them to die of grief, and others to commit suicide,
on account of it.

[Footnote A: Bacon Tait's advertisement of "new and commodious
buildings" for the keeping of negroes, situated at the corner of 15th
and Carey streets, appears in the Richmond Whig of Sept. 1896.--EDITOR.]

In my seventeenth year, I was married to a girl named Harriet, belonging
to John Gatewood, a planter living about four miles from Mr. Pleasant.
She was about a year younger than myself--was a tailoress, and used to
cut out clothes for the hands.

We were married by a white clergyman named Jones; and were allowed to or
three weeks to ourselves, which we spent in visiting and other
amusements.

The field hands are seldom married by a clergyman. They simply invite
their friends together, and have a wedding party.

Our two eldest children died in their infancy: two are now living. The
youngest was only two months old when I saw him for the last time. I
used to visit my wife on Saturday and Sunday evenings.

My young master came back from Europe in delicate health. He was advised
by his physicians to spend the winter in New-Orleans, whither he
accordingly went, taking me with him. Here he became acquainted with a
French lady of one of the first families in the city. The next winter he