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Chap. IX.
BLACK COMPANIONS.
171

a stranger to show her in all kindness that comfort could never be experienced while, as she herself owned, she was living in the neglect of every duty both to God and man.

She seemed roused for the moment, and thanked me for the sympathy which I most sincerely felt, hoping at the same time to renew the conversation in the morning, We had a stormy night, from which she suffered so much as to be unable to leave her berth the next day, and I saw nothing further of her beyond a brief glimpse which I caught of her at Buffalo, as she was carried ashore, looking more despairing even than the night before.

Below this saloon is the ladies' cabin, also very handsome, but disfigured by numerous spittoons, and beneath this again is a small cabin with berths two deep round the sides; and in this abode, as the ship was full, I took a berth for the night with a southern lady, her two female slaves, four negresses, and a mulatto woman, who had just purchased their freedom in Tennessee. These blacks were really lady-like and intelligent, and so agreeable and naïve that, although they chattered to me till two in the morning, I was not the least tired of them.

They wanted me to bring them all home to England, to which they have been taught to look as to a land of liberty and happiness; and it was with much difficulty that I made them understand that I should not be able to find employment for them. I asked one of them, a very fine-looking mulatto, how long she had been married, and her age. She replied that she was thirty-four, and had been married twenty-one years!