Page:A hairdresser's experience in high life.djvu/244

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a hair-dresser's experience

York, and boasting of her family and wealth, but I know of one transaction she was engaged in, that does not add much to her credit. I will tell you what it is I allude to. By some means they had in their family a slave who was to serve for a certain length of time, and then get his freedom. The older members of the family began to think freedom was too sweet a thing to give this boy, and wanted to keep him a slave for life; but fearing the law, they tried to get him sent to Kentucky, but did not know how to accomplish it, when this young, artless lady made up the plot herself. She sent the boy down to a boat for some apples which were on board; the boy took the basket and went for the apples, but the captain being in the plot, when the boy came on board, shoved off the boat and carried him away."

There is another lady in the same neighborhood, who sports a splendid set of diamonds, and I will now tell you how she got them. "It has been a secret; even her neighbors to this day do not know where the girl is they saw so frequently about the house. This lady married a gentleman from a southern State, who owned several slaves, but was a good hearted man, and a perfect gentleman at that time. Being about to get married to a lady in a free State, this gentleman determined to free his servants. He commenced by freeing a woman of, it may be, 22 or 23 years old. After his marriage, he took the girl as domestic in the house with his wife, the girl feeling she was free, and not being so well treated as she had been in the slave States, thought she would like to hire herself to some one else. Being very severely treated by this lady,