"De chilen has tried many times to git it away frum me; but I's allers beat 'em off; and whenever Miss Tildy wants me fur to mind her, she says, 'Now, Amy, I'll jist take yer mammy's present from yer if yer doesn't do what I bids yer;' den de way dis here chile does work isn't slow, I ken tell yer," and with her characteristic gesture she run her tongue out at the corner of her mouth in an oblique manner, and suddenly withdrew it, as though it had passed over a scathing iron. "Could anything induce you to part with it?" I asked. She rolled her eyes up with a look of wonderment, and replied, half ferociously, "Gracious! no--why, hasn't I bin whipped, 'bused and treed; still I'd hold fast to this. No mortal ken take it frum me. You may kill me in welcome," and the child shook her head with a philosophical air, as she said, "and I don't kere much, so mammy's chilen dies along wid me, fur I didn't see no use in our livin' eny how. I's done got my full shere ob beatin' an' we haint no use on dis here airth--so I jist wants fur to die." I looked upon her, so uncared for, so forlorn in her condition, and I could not find it in my heart to blame her for the wish, erring and rebellious as it must appear to the Christian. What _had_ she to live for? To those little children, the sacred bequests of her mother, she was no protection; for, even had she been capable of extending to them all the guidance and watchfulness, both of soul and body, which their delicate and immature natures required, there was every probability, nay, there was a certainty, that this duty would be denied her. She could not hope, at best, to live with them more than a few years. They were but cattle, chattels, property, subject to the will and pleasure of their owners. There would speedily come a time when a division must take place in the estate, and that division would necessarily cause a separation and rupture of family ties. What wonder then, that this poor ignorant child sighed for the calm, unfearing, unbroken rest of the grave? She dreamed not of a "more beyond;" she thought her soul mortal, even as her body; and had she been told that there was for her a world, even a blessed one, to succeed death, she would have shuddered and feared to cross the threshold of the grave. She thought annihilation the greatest, the only blessing awaiting her. The idea of another life would have brought with it visions of a new master and protracted slavery. Freedom and equality of souls, irrespective of _color_, was too transcendental and chimerical an idea to take root in her practical brain. Many times had she heard her master declare that "niggers were jist like dogs, laid down and died, and nothin' come of them afterwards." His philosophy could have proposed nothing more delightful to her ease-coveting mind.