Harriet Ann Jacobs

DURING the first years of my service in Dr. Flint's family, I was accustomed to share some indulgences with the children of my mistress.

But to the slave mother New Year's day comes laden with peculiar sorrows. She sits on her cold cabin floor, watching the children who may all be torn from her the next morning; and often does she wish that she and they might die before the day dawns.

I WAS born a slave; but I never knew it till six years of happy childhood had passed away.

There is a great difference between Christianity and religion at the south. If a man goes to the communion table, and pays money into the treasury of the church, no matter if it be the price of blood, he is called religious.

The beautiful spring came; and when Nature resumes her loveliness, the human soul is apt to revive also.

When I was six years old, my mother died; and then, for the first time, I learned, by the talk around me, that I was a slave.

Death is better than slavery.

The slave girl is reared in an atmosphere of licentiousness and fear.