JUVENILE DEPARTMENT.
For the Liberator.
AUNT MARGERY'S TALK WITH THE YOUNG FOLKS.
FIRST EVENING.
Go fetch my spectacles, Georgy, and let me look at these pictures you have been talking so much about. Ah, they are about the poor slaves! When I was a child, I never saw any thing of this kind.
Look, aunt, how frightened the poor things look, as that ugly cross man. comes among them with his great whip. Oh if I was only a man, and where they are, how I would like to give it to him over his own shoulders! and I would too, if he didn't quit when I told him to.
O George, that would not be right, said a little girl about two years older than himself; besides, It would very likely make him angry, and he might whip the slave a great deal harder when you were gone.
George. Yes, but I wouldn't let him; I would break his whip all to pieces.
Aunt M. But I will tell you, little George, and Catharine too, how you can help the slaves much better now while you are a child, than by fancying what you would do if you were a man.
G. Can you, aunt? oh how glad we shall be to know that!
Aunt M. Well then, you know, do you not, that it is to work for the whites that so many of the colored people are kept in slavery?
G. Yes, Aunt.
Aunt M. But did you ever think about their having to work for you?
G. Why no, aunt; we never saw any slaves.
Aunt M. But they work for you, for all that; But it is such a little while since you knew or cared about the slaves, that I expected you had never thought of it. What were you eating, Catharine, when you came from school this evening?
C. Molasses candy, aunt, and George had mint-stick.
Aunt M. And don't you know that the molasses and the sugar were made by slaves?
C. Yes, aunt, I did know, but I had forgotten it then. Then you mean, I suppose, that the slaves work for us when we use any thing that they raise, and we use sugar every day, so that I am afraid they work for us a great deal. But I never saw you eat any sugar, or any thing with it in, except when another told you it was free sugar . I did not know till the other day what she meant by that, or why you eat no sugar. But the free sugar is not made by slaves. I wonder every body does not use that sort—I mean except the people who keep slaves.
Aunt M. There are many persons, my dear, who cannot get free sugar so conveniently as the other kind. There is a much greater quantity raised by slaves than by free people; and many persons who have been accustomed all their lives to use it, do not think enough about the way in which it is made to be willing to do without it, or to take much trouble to procure such as is free. But it is only because people will buy what is raised by slaves, that slavery is continued; if they would not do so, nobody would want to hold slaves, because it would not be profitable. Little children can help some in this way to get the slaves made free, and when they grow older they can help much more and in many other ways. And every person who will use no more than can be helped of any thing that is made by the labor of slaves, will, very likely, be the means of inducing some-others to do the same; and these other people will get their friends to think as they do, so that one person may in the manner be the means of twenty or fifty becoming the friends of the poor ill-used slave.
C. What else do the slaves raise, aunt, besides sugar?
Aunt M. Cotton, rice, ginger, pepper, coffee, and several other things are raised by slave labor. But there is much coffee raised also by free people that which is brought from the island of Java, and from St. Domingo or Hayti, and some other places, is raised by free people. Cotton, rice and sugar are raised in the United States by slaves, but much sugar is brought from the West Indies. The labor of cultivating sugar, and rice also, in the way they are managed on the slave plantations, is very severe and both of them are things that people can do without. Children do not buy their own clothes, and therefore must wear whatever their parents please to provide them with. But they can do without sugar and rice pudding if they will. They need not spend their money for sweet things unless they choose, and when they are at their meals they can tell their parents they had rather not eat anything that is raised by the slaves. A little friend of mine, who is about six years old, came to me a few weeks ago, after hearing the story of 'An Evening at Home' read from the 'Liberator,' to ask me to tell her more about the poor slave people. I did so; and when she went to her tea that evening. I heard her say, 'Mother, I don't want you to put any sugar in my tea; I had rather have it without, because the sugar was made by slaves.' And her mother did not give her any. You can do so too; and if you say, 'if you please, mother,' I do not think your mother will be offended with you, though she does not herself like to go without sugar for the sake of the slaves. And now we must go down stairs, for ten is ready.
C. But you will talk to us some more to-marrow evening, when we come home from school, will you not, aunt Margery?
