CHAPTER V.
DARK DAYS.
Reader, I am now to describe the events of the two weeks which followed the Fulton onslaught; and I can assure you that language has yet to be invented in which to write in its fullness what, when the children of certain parents shall look back fifty years hence, they will regard as the darkest deeds recorded in the history of their ancestors.
Diabolical as was the mob, yet the shameful and outrageous persecution to which Miss King was subjected during those memorable weeks, at the hands of her relatives and the Fulton Community, sinks it (the mob) into utter significance. How the human beings who so outraged an inoffensive young lady can dare call themselves christians, is to me a mystery which I, at least, shall never be able wholly to explain.
I have already said that Miss King assured me on parting on Sabbath evening that she would meet me in Syracuse on the morrow. Accordingly I awaited at the depôt, on Monday afternoon, the arrival of the Fulton train of cars. But she did not appear, and, for the first time, the thought occurred to me that the Fulton people were determined to leave nothing undone by which to fill out their measure of meanness.
On Tuesday morning next, February 1st, the following article appeared in the "Syracuse Star"—one of the organs of the Fillmore Administration. It needs no comment of mine to instruct the reader as to the character of the paper which could publish such complete diabolism:—
"ANOTHER RESCUE."
"A gentleman from Fulton informs us that that village was the theatre of quite an exciting time, to say the least, on Sunday evening last. The story is as follows:—Rev. Mr. King, Pastor of a regular Wesleyan Methodist, Abolition, Amalgamation Church at Fulton, has an interesting and quite pretty daughter, whom, for some three or four years past, he has kept at School at that pink of a 'nigger' Institution, called the Mc. Grawville College, located South of us, in Cortland County. While there, it seems that a certain genuine negro connected with the Institution, called Professor Allen, (Professor Allen! bah!!) and herself became enamoured of each other, and thereupon entered into the requisite stipulation and agreements to constitute what is known to those interested in such matters, as an 'engagement' to be married. A little time since, the damsel went home to her Amalgamation-preaching parents, and made known the arrangements whereby their lovely daughter expected soon to be folded in the hymenean arms of anti-alabaster Sambo. The parents remonstrated and begged, and got the brothers and sisters to interpose, but all to no effect. The blooming damsel was determined to partake of the 'bed and board,' and inhale the rich odours, refreshing perfumes, and reviving fragrance which Mc. Grawville College teaching had pictured to her in life-like eloquence; and more than this, she would not remain in membership with the denomination that preaches but declines to practice, and sent in her resignation in due form of law. Whereupon, down from Mc. Grawville comes the blushing Allen, all decked in wedding garb, and on Sunday morn he half woke from ponderous sleep, and thought he heard playing on the air such sweet music,—
'"As are those dulcet sounds in break of day,
That creep into the dreaming bridegroom's ear,
And summons him to marriage!"'