A particular friend of mine, who spent several years in a slave State, gave me the following as an occurrence, which transpired in the place where he resided, and at the very time of his residence there. A man,--I will not say gentleman, and in truth I ought to say monster,--who had a wife and a family of grown up daughters, residing with him, had also in his house a young female slave. This slave became the mother of a child, and it was a matter of public notoriety, that the head of the family was the father of it. So barefaced had the thing become, that the man found it necessary to take some measures to get his shame, and the extreme mortification of his wife and daughters out of his mind.[2] He accordingly sold her for the southern market, and though it was with some difficulty that he could persuade the purchaser to take the infant, he at length did so, and the wretched mother, the victim of the master's beastliness and abominable crime, was taken, or rather torn from the house, and borne away, literally uttering cries and shrieks of distress. Now I would like to know whether there is any language under heaven, that will sufficiently set forth the guilt of such a wretch? The following fact was related by a pious physician who resides in the city of Washington. It came to me in such a way that I know it to be a fact. 'There is,' said this physician, 'residing in this city, a young female slave, who is pious, and a member of the same church to which I belong. She is a mulatto, and her complexion nearly white. One day, she came to me in great trouble and distress, and wished me to tell her what she could do. She stated to me, that her master's son, was in the practice of compelling her whenever he pleased, to go with him to his bed. She had been obliged to submit to it, and she knew of no way to obtain any relief. She could not appeal to her master for protection, for he was guilty of like practices himself. She wished to know what she could do? Poor girl, what could she do? She could not lift a hand in self defence. She could not flee, for she was a slave. She would be brought back and beaten, and be placed perhaps in a worse condition than before. And there she was, a pious girl, with all the feelings of her heart alive to the woes of her condition, the victim of the brutal lusts of a dissolute young man; with no means of defence or escape, and no prospect before her, but that of being again and again polluted, whenever his unbridled passions should chance to dictate.