Good-bye, Franconia-dear Franconia! She will be a
mother to my little one; she will keep her word." Thus saying, she
casts a look upward, invokes heaven to be merciful to her
persecutors,--to protect her child,--to guard Franconia through life.
Tears stream down her cheeks as she waves her hand and retires to
the cabin.
CHAPTER XVII.
PLEASANT DEALINGS WITH HUMAN PROPERTY.
WE must deal gently with our scenes; we must describe them without
exaggeration, and in rotation. While the scenes we have just
described were proceeding, another, of deeper import, and more
expressive of slavery's complicated combinations, was being enacted
in another part of the city.
A raffle of ordinary character had been announced in the morning
papers,--we say ordinary, because it came within the ordinary
specification of trade, and violated neither statute law nor
municipal ordinance,--and the raffler, esteemed a great character in
the city, was no less celebrated for his taste in catering for the
amusement of his patrons. On this occasion, purporting to be a very
great one, the inducements held out were no less an incentive of
gambling propensities than an aim to serve licentious purposes. In a
word, it offered "all young connoisseurs of beauty a chance to
procure one of the finest-developed young wenches,--fair, bright,
perfectly brought up, young, chaste, and of most amiable
disposition, for a trifling sum." This was all straight in the way
of trade, in a free country; nobody should blush at it (some
maidens, reading the notice, might feel modestly inclined to),
because nobody could gainsay it.
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