stupidity and obstinacy of a master or mistress, more stupid than
themselves.

When the labors, unremitted for a moment, of the long day were
over (for this mistress was an economical woman, and intended to
get the worth of her money to the uttermost farthing), there was
still no rest for the weary child, for there was a cross baby to
be rocked continuously, lest it should wake and disturb the
mother's rest. The black child sat beside the cradle of the white
child, so near the bed, that the lash of the whip would reach her
if she ventured for a moment to forget her fatigues and sufferings
in sleep. The Mistress reposed upon her bed with the whip on a
little shelf over her head. People of color are, unfortunately, so
constituted that even if the pressure of a broken skull does not
cause a sleep like the sleep of the dead, the need of rest, and
the refreshment of slumber after a day of toil, were often felt by
them. No doubt, this was a great wrong to their masters, and a
cheating them of time which belonged to them, but their slaves did
not always look upon it in that light, and tired nature would
demand her rights; and so nature and the Mistress had a fight for
it.

Rock, rock, went the cradle, and mother and child slept; but alas!
the little black hand would sometimes slip down, and the head
would droop, and a dream of home and mother would visit the weary
one, only to be roughly dispelled by the swift descent of the
stinging lash, for the baby had cried out and the mother had been
awakened. This is no fictitious tale. That poor neck is even now
covered with the scars which sixty years of life have not been
able to efface. It may be that she was thus being prepared by the