by our theory she ought to be imbruted. I beg her pardon, and that of
her father; but they must consider how hard it is for us at the North to
conquer all our prejudices even under the influence of such a
demonstration as her letter. I ask one simple question: Is not this
slave-babe, (and her mother,) of "the down-trodden," and is not this
lady one of the down-treading? And yet she weeps,--not because, as I
would have supposed, she had lost one hundred and fifty dollars in the
child, but as though she loved it like the sick and dying child of a
fellow-creature, of a mother like herself. Now, who at the North ever
hears of such a thing in slavery? The old New York Tabernacle could have
said, It is not in me;--the modern Boston Music Hall says, It is not in
me. None of the antislavery papers, political or religious, say, We have
heard the fame thereof with our ears. Our Northern instructors on the
subject of slavery, the orators, the Uncle Tom's Cabins, "The Scholar an
Agitator," have never taught us to believe this. The South, we are
instructed to think, is a Golgotha, a valley of Hinnom; compacts with it
are covenants with hell. But here is one holy angel with its music; a
ministering spirit; but is she a Lot in Sodom? Abdiel in the revolted
principality? a desolate, mourning Rizpah on that rock which overlooks
four millions of slaves and their tortures?

In a less instructed state of mind on this subject, I should once have
said, on reading this letter,--This is slavery. Here is a view of life
at the South. As a traveller accidentally catches a sight of a family
around their table, and domestic life gleams upon him for a moment; as
the opening door of a church suffers a few notes of the psalm to reach
the ear of one at a distance, this letter, written evidently amidst
household duties and cares, discloses, in a touching manner, the
domestic relations of Southern families and their servants wherever
Christianity prevails. It is one strain of the ordinary music of life in