eu, her
face the very picture of age and starvation, his heart recoiled at the
thought of selling her in her present condition. He read the letter she
bore, contemplated her with an air of pity, and turning to Mr. Benbow,
his methodical book-keeper of twenty years, who had added and subtracted
through a wilderness of bodies and souls, ordered him to send the
shrunken old woman into the pen, on feed. Mr. Forsheu prided himself on
the quality of people sold at his shambles, and would not for the world
hazard his reputation on old Molly, till she was got in better
condition. Molly rather liked this, inasmuch as she had been fed on corn
and prayers exclusively, and more prayers than corn, which is become the
fashion with our much-reduced first families. For nearly four months she
enjoyed, much to the discomfiture of her august owner, the comforts of
Mr. Forsheu's pen. Daily did the anxious old lady study her Milton, and
dispatch a slave to inquire if her piece of aged property had found a
purchaser. The polite vender preserved, with uncommon philosophy, his
temper. He enjoined patience. The condition and age of the property
were, he said, much in the way of sale. Then Mrs. Swiggs began
questioning his ability as a merchant. Aspersions of this kind, the
polite vender of people could not bear with. He was a man of enormous
wealth, the result of his skill in the sale of people. He was the
president of an insurance company, a bank director, a commissioner of
the orphan asylum, and a steward of the jockey club. To his great
relief, for he began to have serious misgivings about his outlay on old
Molly, there came along one day an excellent customer. This was no less
a person than Madame Flamingo. What was singular of this very
distinguished lady was, that she always had a use for old slaves no one
else ever thought of. Her yard was full of aged and tottering humanity.
One cleaned knives, another fetched ice from the ice-house, a third
blacked boots, a fourth split wood, a fifth carried groceries, and a
sixth did the marketing. She had a decayed negro for the smallest
service; and, to her credit be it said, they were as contented and well
fed a body of tottering age as could be found in old Carolina.

Her knife-cleaning machine having taken it into his head to die one day,
she would purchase another. Mr Forsheu, with that urbanity we so well
understand how to appreciate, informed the distinguished lady that he
had an article exact