Our Nig quotes

Lonely Mag Smith! See her as she walks with downcast eyes and heavy heart.

It was not always thus. She had a loving, trusting heart. Early deprived of parental guardianship, far removed from relatives, she was left to guide her tiny boat over life’s surges alone and inexperienced.

Then some foul tongue would jest of her shame, and averted looks and cold greetings disheartened her. She saw she could not bury in forgetfulness her misdeed, so she resolved to leave her home and seek another in the place she at first fled from.

Alas, how fearful are we to be first in extending a helping hand to those who stagger in the mires of infamy; to speak the first words of hope and warning to those emerging into the sunlight of morality!

Who can tell what numbers, advancing just far enough to hear a cold welcome and join in the reserved converse of professed reformers, disappointed, disheartened, have chosen to dwell in unclean places, rather than encounter these “holier-than-thou” of the great brotherhood of man!

“Git out, Pete! and when you come in dis shop again, let a nigger know it. Don’t steal in like a thief.”

Pity and love know little severance. One attends the other.

Jim acknowledged the presence of the former, and his efforts in Mag’s behalf told also of a finer principle.

“You’s had trial of white folks anyhow. They run off and left ye, and now none of ’em come near ye to see if you’s dead or alive.

I’s black outside, I know, but I’s got a white heart inside. Which you rather have, a black heart in a white skin, or a white heart in a black one?

”

He prevailed; they married. You can philosophize, gentle reader, upon the impropriety of such unions, and preach dozens of sermons on the evils of amalgamation.

Want is a more powerful philosopher and preacher.

Poor Mag. She has sundered another bond which held her to her fellows. She has descended another step down the ladder of infamy.

“She looks like a good girl; I think I shall love her, so lay aside all prejudice, and vie with each other in showing kindness and goodwill to one who seems different from you,” were the closing remarks of the kind lady.

Those kind words! The most agreeable sound which ever meets the ear of sorrowing, grieving childhood.

Example rendered her words efficacious. Day by day there was a manifest change of deportment towards “Nig.” Her speeches often drew merriment from the children; no one could do more to enliven their favorite pastimes than Frado.

“I think I should rule my own house, John,”—

“And live in hell meantime,” added Mr. Bellmont.

John now sauntered out to the barn to await the quieting of the storm.

The dinner hour passed. Frado had not appeared. Mrs. B. made no inquiry or search. Aunt Abby looked long, and found her concealed in an outbuilding. “Come into the house with me,” implored Aunt Abby.

“I ain’t going in any more,” sobbed the child.

“What will you do?” asked Aunt Abby.

“You won’t be whipped. You must try to be a good girl,” counselled James.

“If I do, I get whipped,” sobbed the child. “They won’t believe what I say. Oh, I wish I had my mother back; then I should not be kicked and whipped so. Who made me so?”

“Who made Aunt Abby?”

“Well, then, I don’t like him.”

“Because he made her white, and me black. Why didn’t he make us both white?”

“I don’t know; try to go to sleep, and you will feel better in the morning,” was all the reply he could make to her knotty queries. It was a long time before she fell asleep;

and that won’t do. Just think how much profit she was to us last summer. We had no work hired out; she did the work of two girls—”

“And got the whippings for two with it!” remarked Mr. Bellmont.

“I’ll beat the money out of her, if I can’t get her worth any other way,” retorted Mrs. B. sharply. While this scene was passing, Frado was trying to utter the prayer of the publican, “God be merciful to me a sinner.”

It was not long before an opportunity offered of profiting by his advice. She was sent for wood, and not returning as soon as Mrs. B. calculated, she followed her, and, snatching from the pile a stick, raised it over her.

“Stop!” shouted Frado, “strike me, and I’ll never work a mite more for you;” and throwing down what she had gathered, stood like one who feels the stirring of free and independent thoughts.

By this unexpected demonstration, her mistress, in amazement, dropped her weapon, desisting from her purpose of chastisement. Frado walked towards the house, her mistress following with the wood she herself was sent after.

She did not know, before, that she had a power to ward off assaults. Her triumph in seeing her enter the door with her burden, repaid her for much of her former suffering.

It was characteristic of Mrs. B. never to rise in her majesty, unless she was sure she should be victorious.

This affair never met with an “after clap,” like many others.

This afforded her better maintenance than she had yet found. She passed into the various towns of the State she lived in, then into Massachusetts. Strange were some of her adventures.

Watched by kidnappers, maltreated by professed abolitionists, who didn’t want slaves at the South, nor niggers in their own houses, North.

Faugh! to lodge one; to eat with one; to admit one through the front door; to sit next one; awful!