Old Maria--how pitiful she looks! Poor old grandma! Sixty years have passed over her gray hairs; she has done her duty--(what duty had she to do?)--she has done all she could, without murmuring. She has raised children, nursed grand-children. Never as her own--no, always for her master! She has been always a very meek, a very quiet, good-natured soul. But to-day--had she ever such a feeling of approaching evil? She is not quiet to-day; she trembles every time she glances at her dear family. She is asking herself, ‘Shall I be permitted to go with them? or shall I be sold alone?’ Hear! What said he there--that stately man with his white neckcloth, his gold chain, and large seal thereon? What said he? ‘I do not want the old woman. Sell her alone!’ Yes! that man had the last bid. He paid $3000 for James, Johanna, Cornelius, and Jane; but he won’t buy the old woman. No! he only wants ‘young hands.’ And the old mother, the kind grandma, is torn away from her dear family, and will never see them again. She is sold for $200 to another, and all her happiness is given in the bargain! Some people pretend that slaves are indifferent to their being bought and sold. Upon questioning, I was told by many slaves who had comparatively kind masters, that their minds are constantly troubled for fear of being sold. They would rather submit to the most cruel treatment at the hands of their masters, than to be separated. A very strong and valuable slave in Mobile assured me, that if his master should ever attempt to sell him, he would jump into the river. His idea of hell, he said, was a large platform of red hot iron, where bad people are to be sold. The auctioneer there is the devil. ‘There is,’ said he, ‘a good deal more white folks sold there by the devil than black ones.’ If those poor fellows had no reason like brutes--if they could not be conscious of their miserable condition--if they had no rational feeling--they might be less unhappy; but their reason, their power of intellect, is frequently superior to that of their brutal and often drunken masters. When slaves, who have been raised by kind masters, know that they shall be sold to men of ill repute, they live in a constant state of desperation, until they are sold, when they submit themselves to their deplorable lot, or look out for some opportunity to run away. I shall never forget an awful catastrophe which took place in a large Southern seaport while I resided there. A beautiful quadroon slave girl, of about sixteen summers, with a skin such as many a Spanish lady would be proud of, and with splendid long black curls, was bought at auction for $1900 by a confirmed dissolute rascal, who forced her in the same night to stay with him.