We, all three, wept bitterly that day; for we might be parting, and we feared we were parting, forever.

No one could tell among which pile of chattels I should be flung.

Thus early, I got a foretaste of that painful uncertainty which slavery brings to the ordinary lot of mortals.

Sickness, adversity and death may interfere with the plans and purposes of all; but the slave has the added danger of changing homes, changing hands, and of having separations unknown to other men.

Then, too, there was the intensified degradation of the spectacle.