'It was during the happy period of his employment in the factory that George had seen and married his wife. During that period—being much trusted and favoured by his employer—he had free liberty to come and go at discretion. The marriage was highly approved of by Mrs Shelby, who, with a little womanly complacency in match-making, felt pleased to unite her handsome favourite with one of her own class, who seemed in every way suited to her; and so they were married in her mistress's great parlour, and her mistress herself adorned the bride's beautiful hair with orange-blossoms, and threw over it the bridal veil, which certainly could scarce have rested on a fairer head; and there was no lack of white gloves, and cake and wine—of admiring guests to praise the bride's beauty, and her mistress's indulgence and liberality. For a year or two, Eliza saw her husband frequently, and there was nothing to interrupt their happiness, except the loss of two infant children, to whom she was passionately attached, and whom she mourned with a grief so intense as to call for gentle remonstrance from her mistress, who sought, with maternal anxiety, to direct her naturally passionate feelings within the bounds of reason and religion.
'After the birth of little Harry, however, she had gradually become tranquillised and settled; and every bleeding tie and throbbing nerve, once more entwined with that little life, seemed to become sound and healthful; and Eliza was a happy woman up to the time that her husband was rudely torn from his kind employer, and brought under the iron sway of his legal owner.
'The manufacturer, true to his word, visited Mr Harris a week or two after George had been taken away, when, as he hoped, the heat of the occasion had passed away, and tried every possible inducement to lead him to restore him to his former employment.
"You needn't trouble yourself to talk any longer," said he doggedly; "I know my own business, sir."
"I did not presume to interfere with it, sir. I only thought that you might think it for your interest to let your man to us on the terms proposed."
"Oh, I understand the matter well enough. I saw your winking and whispering the day I took him out of the factory; but you don't come it over me that way. It's a free country, sir; the man's mine, and I do what I please with him—that's it."
'And so fell George's last hope: nothing before him but a life of toil and drudgery, rendered more bitter by every little smarting vexation and indignity which tyrannical ingenuity could devise.' One day George visited his wife in a distracted state of feeling. '"I have been careful, and I have been patient," said he; "but it's growing worse and worse: flesh and blood can't bear it any longer. Every chance he can get to insult and torment me, he takes. I thought I could do my work well, and keep on quiet, and have some time to read and learn out of work-hours; but the more he sees I can do, the more he loads on. He says that though I don't say anything, he sees I've got the devil in me, and he means to bring it out; and one of these days it will come out in a way that he wont like, or I'm mistaken."
"O dear! what shall we do?" said Eliza mournfully.
"It was only yesterday," said George, "as I was busy loading stones into a cart, that young Mas'r Tom stood there, slashing his whip so near the horse, that the creature was frightened. I asked him to stop, as pleasant as I could: he just kept right on. I begged him again, and then he turned on me, and began striking me. I held his hand, and then he screamed, and kicked, and ran to his father, and told him that I was fighting him. He came in a rage, and said he'd teach me who was my master; and he tied me to a tree, and cut switches for young master, and told him that he might whip me till he was tired; and he did do it. If I don't make him remember it some time!" And the brow of the young man grew dark, and his eyes burned with an expression that made his young wife tremble. "Who made this man my master—that's what I want to know?" he said.
"Well," said Eliza mournfully, "I always thought that I must obey my master and mistress, or I couldn't be a Christian."