'When the child was roughly snatched from her, she paused an instant, as if collecting her thoughts, and then, awakening to the reality of the case, she started wildly after it. But Meminger was too quick for her. He was used to such scenes. He caught her before she had gone three steps, and rudely threw her down. She uttered scream after scream, and implored him not to part her from her child. Turning alternately from the unfeeling and repulsive countenance of the slave-trader to the retreating form of her late master, who bore away farther and farther from her all that she knew of love or hope on earth, her impassioned entreaties touched every key-note of human agony from frenzy to despair. It was of no use. Meminger regarded her feelings no more than I regarded the lowings of my stock when I was in the droving business. 'He mounted his horse, brought him up alongside of a low bank, and ordered the woman to get up behind him. This she did as one accustomed to obey, groaning and crying piteously. He placed her behind his saddle, astride of the horse as if she were a man. In this position, what dress she had on, and it was not much, was necessarily drawn up above her knees. She had an old pair of scuffs of shoes on, the rest of the limbs were bare. And in this way we went on through the cold, she shivering, sobbing, and clinging to the negro-trader, all the way to Lexington. Only at Nicholasville, I persuaded Meminger to alight and get some clothes to wrap up the girl's legs to prevent them from being frosted before he got her home.' 'And do you really think she had a mother's affection for her child, and felt its loss as acutely as other mothers--white mothers?' I asked him. 'Do I think so?' he asked, almost fiercely. 'Come here, Henry Clay!' and he reached down and lifted his boy up into his huge arms and kissed him with fervor. 'Do you see that boy? Do you think his white mother loves him?' he asked. 'No doubt of it,' I answered. 'And I tell you, Owen Glendower,' he resumed, 'that just as my wife, Mrs. Winters, loves this boy, did that black mother love her child. More strongly, more firmly did she love it; more frantically did she bewail its loss, because her reason did not suggest any hope of its ultimate recovery, such as might be entertained by an intelligent white woman. And when it was suddenly snatched from her bosom, on that cold day, by the Kentucky River, it was as much lost to her as if it had been snatched by the hand of death instead of that of her inhuman master.' 'This was a single instance, you may say; but if I've seen _one_, I've seen _fifty_ such. Not all alike, but varying with circumstance, locality, and occasion; and yet all due alike to the essential elements of human slavery, and inseparable from the institution.' * * * * *