I may
remark here, that, while this fact will be read with disgust and
shame at the north, it will be _laughed at_, as smart and
praiseworthy in Mr. Covey, at the south; for a man is no more
condemned there for buying a woman and devoting her to this life
of dishonor, <170>than for buying a cow, and raising stock from
her. The same rules are observed, with a view to increasing the
number and quality of the former, as of the latter.
I will here reproduce what I said of my own experience in this
wretched place, more than ten years ago:
If at any one time of my life, more than another, I was made to
drink the bitterest dregs of slavery, that time was during the
first six months of my stay with Mr. Covey. We were worked all
weathers. It was never too hot or too cold; it could never rain,
blow, snow, or hail too hard for us to work in the field. Work,
work, work, was scarcely more the order of the day than the
night. The longest days were too short for him, and the shortest
nights were too long for him. I was somewhat unmanageable when I
first went there; but a few months of his discipline tamed me.
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