"Did you see my first husband there, brother Pinchen?"
"No, sister Young, I didn't see brother Pepper, but I've no doubt but that he was there."
"Well, I don't know," said she; "I have my doubts. He was not the happiest man in the world. He was always borrowing trouble about something or another. Still, I saw some happy moments with Mr. Pepper. I was happy when I made his acquaintance, happy during our courtship, happy a while after our marriage, and happy when he died."
Here she put her handkerchief to her eyes, and wept bitterly for a moment. At this juncture Hannah asked, "Did you see my husband, Ben, up in hebben, Massa Pinchen?"
"No, no, Hannah, I didn't go amongst the blacks," answered he.
"Of course not," said mistress; "brother Pinchen didn't go among the niggers." Turning aside to Hannah, and in a whisper, she exclaimed, "What are you asking questions for? Never mind, my lady, I'll whip you well when I'm done here. I'll skin you from head to foot. Do go on with your heavenly conversation, brother Pinchen; it does my very soul good. This is indeed a precious moment for me. I do love to hear of Christ and him crucified."
After the conversation had ceased, and the preacher gone out to call on Mrs. Daniels, Mrs. Young said to the maid, "Now, Hannah, brother Pinchen is gone; you get the cowhide, and I'll whip you well, for aggravating me as you did to-day. It seems as if I can never sit down to take a little comfort with the Lord, without the devil putting it into your head to cross me. I've no doubt, Hannah, that I'll miss going to heaven on your account; but I'll whip you well before I leave this world—that I will." The servant received a flogging, Mrs. Young felt easier, and I was in the kitchen amusing my fellow-slaves with telling over Mr. Pinchen's last experience. Here let me say, that we regarded the religious profession of the whites around us as a farce, and our master and mistress, together with their guest, as mere hypocrites. During the entire visit of the preacher, the servants had a joyful time over my representations of what was going on in the great house.
The removal of my master's family and slaves to the centre of the State of Missouri about this time, caused some change in our condition. My young master, William, had now grown to be a stout boy of five years of age. No restraint thrown around him by the doctor or his wife, aunt Dolly, his nurse, not permitted to control any of his actions, William had become impudent, petulant, peevish, and cruel. Sitting at the tea table, he would often desire to make his entire meal out of the sweetmeats, the sugar-bowl, or the cake; and when mistress would not allow him to have them, he, in a fit of anger, would throw any thing within his reach at me; spoons, knives, forks, and dishes would be hurled at my head, accompanied with language such as would astonish any one not well versed in the injurious effects of slavery upon the rising generation. Thomas Jefferson, in 1788, in a letter to M. Warville, Paris, writing upon slavery, alludes to its influence upon the young as follows:—
"The parent storms, the child looks on, catches the lineaments of wrath, puts on the same airs in the circle of smaller slaves, GIVES LOOSE TO HIS WORST PASSIONS; and, thus nursed, educated, and daily exercised in tyranny, cannot but be stamped by it with odious peculiarities."
In the Virginia legislature, in the year 1832, Hon. Lewis Summers said,—