_ may have some choice as to
where her remains shall be deposited."

It had never occurred to Mrs. Flint that slaves could have any feelings.
When my grandmother was consulted, she at once said she wanted Nancy to lie
with all the rest of her family, and where her own old body would be
buried. Mrs. Flint graciously complied with her wish, though she said it
was painful to her to have Nancy buried away from _her_. She might have
added with touching pathos, "I was so long _used_ to sleep with her lying
near me, on the entry floor."

My uncle Phillip asked permission to bury his sister at his own expense;
and slaveholders are always ready to grant _such_ favors to slaves and
their relatives. The arrangements were very plain, but perfectly
respectable. She was buried on the Sabbath, and Mrs. Flint's minister read
the funeral service. There was a large concourse of colored people, bond
and free, and a few white persons who had always been friendly to our
family. Dr. Flint's carriage was in the procession; and when the body was
deposited in its humble resting place, the mistress dropped a tear, and
returned to her carriage, probably thinking she had performed her duty
nobly.

It was talked of by the slaves as a mighty grand funeral. Northern
travellers, passing through the place, might have described this tribute of
respect to the humble dead as a beautiful feature in the "patriarchal
institution;" a touching proof of the attachment between slaveholders and
their servants; and tender-hearted Mrs. Flint would have confirmed this
impression, with handkerchief at her eyes. _We_ could have told them a
different story. We could have given them a chapter of wrongs and
sufferings, that would have touched their hearts, if they _had_ any hearts
to feel for the colored people. We could have told them how the poor old
slave-mother had toiled, year after year, to earn eight hundred dollars to
buy her son Phillip's right to his own earnings; and how that same Phillip
paid the expenses of the funeral, which they regarded as doing so much
credit to the master. We could also have told them of a poor, blighted
young creature, shut up in a living grave for years, to avoid the tortures
that would be inflicted on her, if she ventured to come out and look on the
face of her departed friend.

All this, and much more, I thought of, as I sat at my loophole, waiting
for the family to return from the grave; sometimes weeping, sometimes
falling asl