I never knew a cruel master die happy.

They are sure to be killed, or die dreadful!" She had an old, rheumatic cook, Martha, who seldom left her basement kitchen, except when she went to her Baptist meeting, but for hours and hours she crooned heart-breaking melodies of that hope within her, of a better and a happier world.
She had a severe attack of acute inflammation of the eyelids, which forcibly closed her eyes, and kept them closed; then she refused to work.
Her wages, one hundred and seventy-five dollars a year, were paid to her owner, a woman, and these went on; so her employer sent for her owner, and I, as an abolitionist, was summoned to the conference, that I might learn to pity the sorrows of mistresses, and understand the deceitfulness of slaves.
The injured owner sat in the shaded parlor, in a blue-black satin dress, that might almost have stood upright without assistance from the flesh or bones inside; with the dress was combined a mass of lace and jewelry that represented a large amount of money, and the mass as it sat there, and as I recall it, has made costly attire odious.
This bedizzoned martyr, this costumer's advertisement, sat and fanned as she recounted her grievances.

Her entire allowance for personal expenses, was the wages of nine women, and her husband would not give her another dollar.

They, knowing her necessities, were so ungrateful!--nobody could think how ungrateful; but in all her sorrows, Martha was her crowning grief.

She had had two husbands, and had behaved so badly when the first was sold.