Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 438

A coloured girl, eighteen years of age, a few years ago escaped from slavery in the South. Through scenes of adventure and peril, almost more strange than fiction can create, she found her way to Boston. She obtained employment, secured friends, and became a consistent member of the Methodist church. She became interested in a very worthy young man of her own complexion, who was a member of the same church. They were soon married. Their home, though humble, was the abode of piety and contentment. Industrious, temperate, and frugal, all their wants were supplied. Seven years passed away. They had two little boys, one six, and the other four years of age. These children, the sons of a free father, but of a mother who had been a slave, by the laws of the Southern States were doomed to their mother's fate. These Boston boys, born beneath the shadow of Faneuil Hall, the sons of a free citizen of Boston, and educated in the Boston Free Schools, were, by the compromises of the constitution, admitted to be slaves, the property of a South Carolinian planter. The Boston father had no right to his own sons. The law, however, had long been considered a dead-letter. This was not to continue. The Fugitive Slave Law was enacted. It revived the hopes of the slave-owners. A young, healthy, energetic mother, with two fine boys, was a rich prize. She would make an excellent mother. Good men began to say: 'We must enforce this law; it is one of the compromises of the constitution.' Christian ministers began to preach: 'The voice of law is the voice of God. There is no higher rule of duty.' As may be supposed, the poor woman was panic-stricken. Her friends gathered around her, and trembled for her. Her husband was absent from home, a seaman on board one of the Liverpool packets. She was afraid to go out of doors, lest some one from the South should see her, and recognise her. One day, as she was going to the grocery for some provisions, her quick anxious eye caught a glimpse of a man prowling around, whom she immediately recognised as from the vicinity of her old home of slavery. Almost fainting with terror, she hastened home, and taking her two children by the hand, fled to the house of a friend. She and her trembling children were hid in the garret. In less than an hour after her escape, the officer, with a writ, came for her arrest. It was a dark and stormy day. The rain, freezing as it fell, swept in floods through the streets of Boston. Night came, cold, black, and tempestuous. At midnight, her friends took her in a hack, and conveyed her, with her children, to the house of her pastor. Hence, after an hour of weeping, for the voice of prayer had passed away into the sublimity of unutterable anguish, they conveyed this mother and her children to one of the Cunard steamers, which fortunately was to sail for Halifax the next day. They took them in the gloom of midnight, through the tempest-swept streets, lest the slave-hunter should meet them. Her brethren and sisters of the church raised a little money from their scanty means to pay her passage, and to save her, for a few days, from starving, after her first arrival in the cold land of strangers. Her husband soon returned to Boston, to find his home desolate, his wife and children exiles in a foreign land. These facts need no word-painting.—Burritt's Bond of Brotherhood.

THE TONGUE OF FIRE

BY MRS NEWTON CROSLAND

I hear December's biting blast,
I see the slippery hail-drops fall—
That shot which frost-sprites laughing cast
In some great Arctic arsenal;
I lean my cheek against the pane,
But start away, it is so chill,
And almost pity tree and plain
For bearing Winter's load of ill.

The sombre sky hangs dark and low,
It looks a couch where mists are born—
A throne whence they in clusters flow,
Or by the tempest's wrath are torn.
I turn me to the chamber's Heart,
Low pulsing like a vague desire,
And strike an ebon block apart,
Till up there springs a Tongue of Fire!

It hath a jovial roaring tone,
Like one rebuking half in jest—
Yet ah! I wish there could be shewn
The wisdom that it hath exprest—
Or sinking to a lambent glow,
Its arched and silent cavern seems
A magic glass whereon to shew,
And shape anew, our broken dreams!

I vow the Fiery Tongue hath caught
Quaint echoes of the passing time;
Thus laughs it at my idle thought,
My longing for a fairer clime:
'So—so you'd like some southern shore,
To gather flowers the winter through,
As if there were on earth no more
For busy human hands to do!

'And guard your Own!—In this, oh mark
High duty and the world's far fate;
Thou art poor deluged Europe's Ark,
Her fortunes on Thy Safety wait;
And—couching lion at her feet—
In all her matron graces drest,
Let free Britannia smiling greet
Her radiant Daughter of the West!

'The broad Atlantic flows between,
But love can bridge the ends of earth;
Of all the lands my race have seen,
These two the rest are more than worth;
Not for their skies, or fruits, or gold,
But for their sturdy growth of Man,
Who walks erect, and will not hold
His life beneath a tyrant's ban.

'Yet do not curl your lips with scorn
That others are not great as ye;
Your fathers fought ere ye were born,
And died that thus it now should be!
I tell ye, spirits walk unseen,
Excepting by the soul's strong sight;
Hampden and Washington, I ween,
Are leaders yet in Freedom's fight!'

It ceased; but oh, Its words of fire
Had dropped upon my Northman's heart,
Rebuked a moment's vain desire,
And slain it like a hunter's dart;
Oh, welcome now the slippery hail,
And welcome winter's biting blast,
Ye braced our sires; they still prevail
Who triumphed through the stormy past.

And as beside the ruddy blaze
We muse or talk of mighty things,
In clarion tone one little phrase
Still through the heart's deep echoes rings:
'Our Hearths—our Homes—beyond compare!'
Those charmèd circles whence there rise
The steadfast souls that do and dare,
And shape a Nation's destinies!

There, pile the fagots high—aslant—
And let them crackle out their hymn;
There is no logic—that I grant—
In wilful words of woman's whim:
And yet I feel the links that glide
'Twixt English Hearths and Liberty,
And track how We—our truest pride—
First sheltered Her Divinity!

    —Ladies' Companion.

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