ss of _property_ only that presented itself to
his mind.

I knew a gentleman of great benevolence and generosity of character,
so essentially to injure the eye of a little boy, about ten years old,
as to destroy its sight, by the blow of a cowhide, inflicted whilst he
was whipping him.[7] I have heard the same individual speak of
"breaking down the spirit of a slave under the lash" as perfectly
right.

[Footnote 7: The Jewish law would have set this servant free, for his
eye's sake, but he was held in slavery and sold from hand to hand,
although, besides this title to his liberty according to Jewish law,
he was a _mulatto_, and therefore free under the Constitution of the
United States, in whose preamble our fathers declare that they
established it expressly to "secure the blessings of _liberty_ to
themselves and _their posterity_."--Ed.]

I also know that an aged slave of his, (by marriage,) was allowed to
get a scanty and precarious subsistence, by begging in the streets of
Charleston--he was too old to work, and therefore _his allowance was
stopped_, and he was turned out to make his living by begging.

When I was about thirteen years old, I attended a seminary, in
Charleston, which was superintended by a man and his wife of superior
education. They had under their instruction the daughters of nearly
all the aristocracy. Their cruelty to their slaves, both male and
female, I can never forget. I remember one day there was called into
the school room to open a window, a boy whose head had been shaved in
order to disgrace him, and he had been so dreadfully whipped that he
could hardly walk. So horrible was the impression produced upon my
mind by his heart-broken countenance and crippled person that I
fainted away. The sad and ghastly countenance of one of their female
mulatto slaves who used to sit on a low stool at her sewing in the
piazza, is now fresh before me. She often told me, secretly, how
cruelly she was whipped when they sent her to the work house. I had
known so much of the terrible scourgings inflicted in that house of
blood, that when I was once obliged to pass it, the very sight smote
me with such horror that my limbs could hardly sustain me. I felt as
if I was passing the precincts of hell. A friend of mine who lived in
the neighborhood, told me she often heard the screams of the slaves
under their torture.

I once heard a physician of a high family, and of great respectability
in his profession,