ling the bookseller that
your master wants it for his sister's little boy. You find the
picture of a cat, with three letters by its side; and now you know
how cat is spelt. Elated with your wonderful discovery, you are
eager to catch a minute to study your primer. Too eager, alas! for
your mistress catches you absorbed in it, and your little book is
promptly burned. You are sent to be flogged, and your lacerated back
is washed with brine to make it heal quickly. But in spite of all
their efforts, your intelligent mind is too cunning for them. Before
twenty years have passed, you have stumbled along into the Bible;
alone in the dark, over a rugged road of vowels and consonants. You
keep the precious volume concealed under a board in the floor, and
read it at snatches, by the light of a pine knot. You read that God
has created of one blood all the nations of the earth; and that his
commandment is, to do unto others as we would that they should do
unto us. You think of your weeping mother, torn from your tender
arms by the cruel slave-trader; of the interdicted light of
knowledge; of the Bible kept as a sealed book from all whose skins
have a tinge of black, or brown, or yellow; of how those brown and
yellow complexions came to be so common; of yourself, the son of the
Governor, yet obliged to read the Bible by stealth, under the
penalty of a bleeding back washed with brine. These and many other
things revolve in your active mind, and your unwritten inferences
are worth whole folios of theological commentaries.

As youth ripens into manhood, life bears for you, as it does for
others, its brightest, sweetest flower. You love young Amy, with
rippling black hair, and large dark eyes, with long, silky fringes.
You inherit from your father, the Governor, a taste for beauty
warmly-tinted, like Cleopatra's. You and Amy are of rank to make a
suitable match; for you are the son of a Southern Governor, and she
is the daughter of a United States Senator, from the North, who
often shared her master's hospitality; her handsome mother being a
portion of that hospitality, and he being large-minded enough to
"conquer prejudices." You have good sympathy in other respects also,
for your mothers were both slaves; and as it is conveniently and
profitably arranged for the masters that "the child shall follow the
condition of the _mother_," you are consequently both of you slaves.
But there are some compensations for your hard lot. Amy's simpl