WHILE the gloomy prospect we have just presented hovered over
Marston's plantation, proceedings of no minor importance, and having
reference to this particular case, are going on in and about the
city. Maxwell, moved by Clotilda's implorings, had promised to gain
her freedom for her; but he knew the penalty, feared the result of a
failure, and had hesitated to make the attempt. The consequences
were upon him, he saw the want of prompt action, and regretted that
the time for carrying his resolution into effect had passed. The
result harassed him; he saw this daughter of misfortune, on her
bended knees, breathing a prayer to Omnipotence for the deliverance
of her child; he remembered her appeal to him, imploring him to
deliver her from the grasp of slavery, from that licentiousness
which the female slave is compelled to bear. He saw her confiding in
him as a deliverer,--the sight haunted him unto madness! Her child!
her child! Yes, that offspring in which her hopes were centered! For
it she pleaded and pleaded; for it she offered to sacrifice her own
happiness; for it she invoked the all-protecting hand. That child,
doomed to a life of chattel misery; to serve the lusts of modern
barbarism in a country where freedom and civilization sound praises
from ocean to ocean; to be obscured in the darkness and cruelty of
an institution in which justice is scoffed, where distress has no
listeners, and the trap-keepers of men's souls scorn to make honest
recompense while human flesh and blood are weighed in the scale of
dollars and cents! He trembles before the sad picture; remonstrances
and entreaties from him will be in vain; nor can he seize them and
carry them off.
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