The story of my life ; or, The sunshine and shadow of seventy years / by Mary A. Livermore ... with hitherto unrecorded incidents and recollections of three years' experience as an army nurse in the great Civil War, and reminiscences of twenty-five years' experiences on the lecture platform ... to which is added six of her most popular lectures ... with portraits and one hundred and twenty engravings from designs by eminent artists ...

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THE STORY OF MY LIFE.

settled the question of this man's vocation. He was a slavetrader. But what business had he with Mr. Henderson? I
was certain that his visit had been expected. My host had
told me that the sale of a slave was his last resort when
one was unmanageable. Who, among the servants, were
under the ban? What new horror was to be perpetrated?
As we walked to the schoolhouse after dinner, the
children criticised their guest, denouncing him as an impudent boor, and an ignorant, ill-bred fellow.
" Pa ought to have sent him to the kitchen to eat, and
not have him brought to our table!" said Mary.
"Oh, sister Mary, you can't send a white man to eat
with niggahs!" replied Dick, as if that were an unpardonable offense. "What was it he said we were - a peart set
o' young 'uns?" And he laughed heartily as he recalled
the compliment.
" There's nothin' to laugh at!" said Mary; " he made
Ma very angry. She won't sit at table with him again,
I can tell you, the ignorant, ill-bred fellow! I wonder what
he's here for?"
"Well," said Dick, "it's jess as I told you; he's a slavetrader. Pa's gwine to sell Aleck to 'im; he's undertook to
run away again since the Mill burnt. Pa's got to sell 'im or
lose 'im."
"Yes," said Mary; "Pa's been going to sell him for
some time; he keeps the whole place in a row with his continual attempts to run away It's best that he should go."
Could these children be expected to think or reason
otherwise, reared as they had been? "How long is Mr.
Heath going to stay?" I inquired of Dick, for I had resolved
to spare myself the suffering of witnessing the enforced
exodus of any of these poor black people from their homes
and families, in the clutch of a merciless slave-trader.