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LIFE AMONG THE LOWLY 17
infant children, to whom she was passionately attached, and whom she mourned with a grief so intense as to call for gentle remonstrance from her mistress, who sought, with maternal anxiety, to direct her naturally passionate feelings within the bounds of reason and religion.
After the birth of little Harry, however, she had gradually become tranquillized and settled ; and every bleeding tie and throbbing nerve, .once more entwined with that little life, seemed to become sound and healthful, and Eliza was a happy woman up to the time that her husband was rudely torn from his kind employer, and brought under the iron sway of his legal owner.
The manufacturer, true to his word, visited Mr. Harris a week or two after George had been taken away, when, as he hoped, the heat of the occasion had passed away, and tried every possible inducement to lead him to restore him to his former employment.
" You need n't trouble yourself to talk any longer," said he, doggedly; "I know my own business, sir."
" I did not presume to interfere with it, sir. I only thought that you might think it for your interest to let your man to us on the terms proposed."
" Oh, I understand the matter well enough. I saw your winking and whispering, the day I took him out of the factory ; but you don't come it over me that way. It's a free country, sir ; the man's mine, and I do what I please with him, — that's it! "
And so fell George's last hope ; — nothing before him but a life of toil and drudgery, rendered more bitter by every little smarting vexation and indignity which tyrannical ingenuity could devise.
A very humane jurist once said, The worst use you can put a man to is to hang him. No; there is another use that a man can be put to that is worse ! |
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