ISABELLA AS A MOTHER.


In process of time, Isabella found herself the mother of five
children, and she rejoiced in being permitted to be the instrument
of increasing the property of her oppressors! Think, dear
reader, without a blush, if you can, for one moment, of a mother
thus willingly, and with pride, laying her own children, the 'flesh
of her flesh,' on the altar of slavery-a sacrifice to the bloody
Moloch! But we must remember that beings capable of such
sacrifices are not mothers; they are only 'things,'
'chattels,' 'property.'

But since that time, the subject of this narrative has made
some advances from a state of chattelism towards that of a
woman and a mother; and she now looks back upon her
thoughts and feelings there, in her state of ignorance and
degradation,
as one does on the dark imagery of a fitful dream. One
moment it seems but a frightful illusion; again it appears a terrible
reality. I would to God it were but a dreamy myth, and not, as
it now stands, a horrid reality to some three millions of chattelized
human beings.

I have already alluded to her care not to teach her children
to steal, by her example; and she says, with groanings that cannot
be written, 'The Lord only knows how many times I let my
children go hungry, rather than take secretly the bread I liked
not to ask for.' All parents who annul their preceptive teachings