Lawyers hurried to and fro, buzzing, consulting, bringing authorities,--all anxious, zealous, engaged,--for what?--to save a fellow-man from bondage?--no; anxious and zealous lest he might escape,--full of zeal to deliver him over to slavery. The poor man’s anxious eyes follow vainly the busy course of affairs, from which he dimly learns that he is to be sacrificed--on the altar of the Union; and that his heart-break and anguish, and the tears of his wife, and the desolation of his children, are, in the eyes of these well-informed men, only the bleat of a sacrifice, bound to the horns of the glorious American altar! * * * * * Again it is a bright day, and business walks brisk in this market. Senator and statesman, the learned and patriotic, are out, this day, to give their countenance to an edifying and impressive, and truly American spectacle,--the sale of a man! All the preliminaries of the scene are there; dusky-browed mothers, looking with sad eyes while speculators are turning round their children,--looking at their teeth, and feeling of their arms; a poor, old, trembling woman, helpless, half-blind, whose last child is to be sold, holds on to her bright boy with trembling hands. Husbands and wives, sisters and friends, all soon to be scattered like the chaff of the threshing-floor, look sadly on each other with poor nature’s last tears; and among them walk briskly glib, oily politicians, and thriving men of law, letters, and religion, exceedingly sprightly and in good spirits,--for why?--it isn’t _they_ that are going to be sold; it’s only somebody else. And so they are very comfortable, and look on the whole thing as quite a matter-of-course affair; and, as it is to be conducted to-day, a decidedly valuable and judicious exhibition. And now, after so many hearts and souls have been knocked and thumped this way and that way by the auctioneer’s hammer, comes the _instructive_ part of the whole; and the husband and father, whom we saw in his simple home, reading and praying with his children, and rejoicing, in the joy of his poor ignorant heart, that he lived in a free country, is now set up to be admonished of his mistake. Now there is great excitement, and pressing to see, and exultation and approbation; for it is important and interesting to see a man put down that has tried to be a _free man_. “That’s he, is it?--Couldn’t come it, could he?” says one. “No, and he will never come it, that’s more,” says another, triumphantly. “I don’t generally take much interest in scenes of this nature,” says a grave representative;--“but I came here to-day for the sake of the _principle_!” “Gentlemen,” says the auctioneer, “we’ve got a specimen here that some of your Northern abolitionists would give any price for; but they shan’t have him!--no! we’ve looked out for that. The man that buys him must give bonds never to sell him to go North again!”