Page:The American fugitive in Europe.djvu/22

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MEMOIR OF

at a country inn. The following morning, just as they were about to start, the child again commenced crying. Walker stepped up to her, and told her to give the child to him. The mother tremblingly obeyed. He took the child by one arm, as any one would a cat by the leg, and walked into the house where they had been staying, and said to the lady, 'Madam, I will make you a present of this little nigger; it keeps making such a noise that I can't bear it.' 'Thank you, sir,' said the lady. The mother, as soon as she saw that the child was to be left, ran up to Mr. Walker, and, falling on her knees, begged of him, in an agony of despair, to let her have her child. She clung round his legs so closely that for some time he could not kick her off; and she cried, 'O my child, my child! Master, do let me have my dear, dear child! O! do, do! I will stop its crying, and love you forever, if you will only let me have my child again.' But her prayers were not heeded; they passed on, and the mother was separated from her child forever.

"After the woman's child had been given away, Mr. Walker rudely commanded her to retire into the ranks with the other slaves. Women who had children were not chained, but those who had none were. As soon as her child was taken she was chained to the gang."

Nothing was more grievous to the sensitive feeling of William than seeing the separation of families by the slave-trader: husbands taken from their wives, and mothers from their children, without the least appearance of feeling on the part of those who separated them. While at New Orleans, on one occasion William saw a slave murdered. The circumstances were as follows: In the evening, between seven and eight o'clock, a slave