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CHAPTER VI.
After the trial was over and my mother had at last been awarded the
right to own her own child, her next thought reverted to sister Nancy,
who had been gone so long, and from whom we had never heard, and the
greatest ambition mother now had was to see her child Nancy. So, we
earnestly set ourselves to work to reach the desired end, which was to
visit Canada and seek the long-lost girl. My mother being a
first-class laundress, and myself an expert seamstress, it was easy to
procure all the work we could do, and command our own prices. We
found, as well as the whites, a great difference between slave and
free labor, for while the first was compulsory, and, therefore, at the
best, perfunctory, the latter must be superior in order to create a
demand, and realizing this fully, mother and I expended the utmost
care in our respective callings, and were well rewarded for our
efforts.
By exercising rigid economy and much self-denial, we, at last,
accumulated sufficient to enable mother to start for Canada, and oh!
how rejoiced I was when that dear, overworked mother approached the
time, when her hard-earned and long-deferred holiday was about to
begin. The uses of adversity is a worn theme, and in it there is much
of weak cant, but when it is considered how much of sacrifice the
poverty-stricken must bear in order to procure the slightest
gratification, should it not impress the thinking mind with amazement,
how much of fortitude and patience the honest poor display in the
exercise of self-denial! Oh! ye prosperous! prate of the uses of
adversity as poetically as you please, we who are obliged to learn of
them by bitter experience would greatly prefer a change of
surroundings.
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