SLAVES AT ST. LOUIS. 



215 



before, in order to be calm at the time ; and so I wept and felt 

 for the poor woman beforehand, and then turned myself into 

 a looking-glass. The election went on as quietly as could be." 

 . . . At the post-office he found a letter written in a good 

 hand, addressed to " Philip P. Carpenter, Abolition Nigger- 

 thieving Lecturer, City:" — "St. Louis, July 31, "59. A com- 

 mittee of fifty staunch and tried men, of which I have been 

 elected foreman, has been appointed for the purpose of tarring 

 and feathering and riding you on a rail, should you dare 

 attempt to lecture to-morrow night, as advertised. — Zachariah 

 Browning, Foreman." "I went to the Mayor's office, put it 

 in his hands, and he smiled. I asked him if he advised me to 

 proceed, or to give it up. He had no advice to give; his 

 duties would begin if there was a row. ... As I was not at an 

 hotel, and had given no name at the boarding-house, I was 

 pleasingly incog. : and had written my lecture in manifold ; so 

 that if there was any row, my luggage, etc. , would find their way 

 to the Mouldings. 



" I went back to the Court-House, and there was the poor 

 woman seated on a step with her four little children ; the twins 

 of two months old in her arms. She did not seem to be 

 guarded, but of course she was watched. Persons passed by : 

 looked at her ; sometimes stopped to talk to her : sometimes 

 she was left alone ; but the election was evidently the exciting 

 subject. She was a very pleasing-looking woman, well 

 dressed, and evidently a well-cared-for house-servant. She was 

 a mulatto : and a man of the same colour came and brought 

 her water, etc. The day was very hot. I waited a long time 

 in an unobserved corner : till at last the coloured man took 

 part of the children, and they all went down back-stairs through 

 a side-door, and so on through the streets. I wondered 

 whether it was a trick to escape, and followed at a distance. 

 At last, when I got where I was unobserved, I spoke to the 

 man : found that he was the husband and father, that the sale 

 was postponed because of the election, that he was the slave of 

 another master. Of course I told him what I thought of the 

 thing : and so the poor woman will have to go through it all « 



