Page:A hairdresser's experience in high life.djvu/169

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IN HIGH LIFE.
171

years' visit to the South. I asked her if she had remarked that society in the free States was purer and more moral than in the slave States. She said she did not see any difference; but I showed her a difference by telling her "no man in a free State would dare keep his mistress in the same house, or a neighboring one, beside his wife; while in a slave State it was a common thing for a man to have his mistress in the same house with his wife. No matter how elegant or beautiful a woman his wife may be, he has a slave in the house as a second mistress. I do not say this from prejudice, but merely state what my eyes have seen; from the minister down to the lower order of men, all keep their slaves." She observed, "Many have moved into our State recently from free States." I told her that when their hearts were black, and their deeds evil, they were glad to move into some place where they will be sustained in their deviltry. She then said she went North every summer, where she saw as many mulattoes as in the South. I said, "Just so, madam; those are children sent from the South to the North, as all our institutions are filled with gentlemen's children sent from the South. I spent my last winter in Oberlin, Ohio; between three and four hundred children were there—two-thirds of them being gentlemen's children from the South."

I had now got so much excited I did not wish to continue the conversation, and told her I would see her again, when we could finish our subject, as I had staid past my time. I bade her good-by, and dashed down stairs, and on going down, I heard a great shout below me. I stopped on the stairs and looked down in the rotunda, and there was a slave-market.