further down the river, so I was her only confidant. Mother was always
planning and getting ready to go, and while the fire was burning
brightly, it but needed a little more provocation to add to the
flames.




CHAPTER III.


Mrs. Cox was always very severe and exacting with my mother, and one
occasion, when something did not suit her, she turned on mother like a
fury, and declared, "I am just tired out with the 'white airs' you put
on, and if you don't behave differently, I will make Mr. Cox sell you
down the river at once."

Although mother turned grey with fear, she presented a bold front and
retorted that "she didn't care, she was tired of that place, and
didn't like to live there, nohow." This so infuriated Mr. Cox that he
cried, "How dare a negro say what she liked or what she did not like;
and he would show her what he should do."

So, on the day following, he took my mother to an auction-room on Main
Street and sold her to the highest bidder, for five hundred and fifty
dollars. Oh! God! the pity of it! "In the home of the brave and the
land of the free," in the sight of the stars and stripes--that symbol
of freedom--sold away from her child, to satisfy the anger of a
peevish mistress!