reason for the Louisiana or Mississippi planter's investing largely in this sort of property; but why the Kentucky farmer should wish to own slaves, is a mystery: surely it cannot be for the petty ambition of holding human beings in bondage, lording it over immortal souls! Oh, perverse and strange human nature! Thoughts like these, with a lightning-like power, drove through my brain and influenced my mind against Mrs. Mandy, who, I doubt not, was, at heart, a kind, well-meaning woman. How can the slave be a philanthropist? Without saying anything whereby my safety could be imperilled, I left Mrs. Mandy's residence. When I had walked about a hundred yards from the house, I turned and looked back, and was surprised to see her looking after me. "Oh, white woman," I inwardly exclaimed, "nursed in luxury, reared in the lap of bounty, with friends, home and kindred, that mortal power cannot tear you from, how can _you_ pity the poor, oppressed slave, who has no liberty, no right, no father, no brother, or friend, only as the white man chooses he shall have!" Who could expect these children of wealth, fostered by prosperity, and protected by the law, to feel for the ignorant negro, who through ages and generations has been crushed and kept in ignorance? We are told to love our masters! Why should we? Are we dogs to lick the hand that strikes us? Or are we men and women with never-dying souls--men and women unprotected in the very land they have toiled to beautify and adorn! Oh, little, little do ye know, my proud, free brothers and sisters in the North, of all the misery we endure, or of the throes of soul that we have! The humblest of us feel that we are deprived of something that we are entitled to by the law of God and nature. I rambled on through the woods, wrapped in the shadows of gloom and misanthropy. "Why," I asked myself, "can't I be a hog or dog to come at the call of my owner? Would it not be better for me if I could repress all the lofty emotions and generous impulses of my soul, and become a spiritless thing? I would swap natures with the lowest insect, the basest serpent that crawls upon the earth. Oh, that I could quench this thirsty spirit, satisfy this hungry heart, that craveth so madly the food and drink of knowledge! Is it right to conquer the spirit, which God has given us? Is it best for a high-souled being to sit supinely down and bear the vile trammels of an unnatural and immoral bondage? Are these aspirings sent us from above? Are they wings lent the spirit from an angel? Or must they be clipped and crushed as belonging to the evil spirit?" As I walked on, in this state of mind, I neared the spot where I had beheld the interesting stranger.