THE JUVENILE INSTRUCTOR AND COMPANION. OUR YOUTH'S DEPARTMENT. BRITISH SOIL GIVES FREEDOM TO THE SLAVE. It is no small blessing to live in a land of freedom. Such a land is England, and such are all its colonies. We have liberty for religion, liberty for political opinion-freedom for trade, freedom for the press, and freedom for the slave. The time was when our country connived at slavery, allowed men to steal away the negro from his native home, and sell him into slavery. That day of ignorance and guilt has passed away. We have lived to see the British nation not only wil ling to abolish slavery within its own dominions, but to pay the vast sum of twenty millions of money to purchase the slaves' freedom. It is a British law that there shall not be a slave on British soil, either in the Isle of Britain or in her dominions. This law does not, indeed, forbid the slave to tread our soil, but the moment that a slave puts his foot on our soil he becomes a free man. In an instant his chains of bondage melt away, and he rises into the dignity, freedom, and happiness of a human being. It is, therefore, doubtless a providential arrangement that the extensive country of Canada belongs to the British Crown; for, as this country joins the great country of the United States of America, where slavery exists and is sanctioned by law, many slaves every year escape from their tyrant lords, and find an asylum and a home in Canada. Our frontispiece presents the interesting scene of a slave and his wife and child escaping from their bondage, and, on entering the Canadian frontier, are kindly received by s Christian missionary, who bids them welcome to his house. his hospitality, and his friendly counsel as to their future course. George Harris and his wife, with their little one, after passing through innumerable dangers, with hair-breadth escapes, arrive at Sandusky, just on the borders of the large and beautiful Lake Erie, which separates a large portion of the United States from British America. Here they are safely lodged under an hospitable roof, and the next morning they sail by the steamer, which conveys them for ever from the land of bondage to Canada, where they breathe the air and enjoy the blessings of freedom. But their enemies are on the alert the slave-hunter is on their track, and if they should be discovered, death or perpetual slavery must be their doom. They therefore pass in disguise, but we must leave the talented Mrs. Beecher Stowe to describe their escape. Their night was now far spent, and the morning star of liberty rose fair before them. Liberty! electric word! What is it? Is there anything more in it than a name, a rhetorical flourish? Why, men and women of America, does your heart's blood thrill at that word for which your fathers bled, and your braver mothers were willing that their best and noblest should die? Is there anything in it glorious and dear for a nation, that is not also glorious and dear for a man? What is freedom to a nation, but freedom to the individuals in it? What is freedom to that young man who sits there with his arms folded over his broad chest, the tint of African blood in his cheek, its dark fires in his eye-what is freedom to George Harris? To your fathers, freedom was the right of a nation to be a nation. To him, it is the right of a man to be a man and not a brute; the right to call the wife of his bosom his wife, and to protect her from lawless violence; the right to protect and educate his child; the right to have a home of his own, a religion of his own, a character of his own, unsubject to the will of another. All these thoughts were rolling and seething in George's breast, as he was pensively leaning his head on his hand, watching his wife, as she was adapting to her slender and pretty form the articles of man's attire in which it was deemed safest she should escape. "What does make you so sober?" said Eliza, kneeling on one knee and laying her hand on his. "We are only within twenty-four hours of Canada, they say. Only a day and a night on the lake, and then-oh, then !" 66 "O Eliza !" said George, drawing her towards him ; “ that is it! Now my fate is all narrowing down to a point. To come so near, to be almost in sight, and then lose all-I should never live under it, Eliza !" "Don't fear," said his wife hopefully. "The good Lord would not have brought us so far if he didn't mean to carry us through. I seem to feel him with us, George." "You are a blessed woman, Eliza," said George, clasping her with a convulsive grasp. "But oh, tell me! can this great mercy be for us? Will these years and years come to an end?-shall we be free?" of misery "I am sure of it, George "" said Eliza, looking upward, while tears of hope and enthusiasm shone on her long dark lashes. "I feel it in me, that God is going to bring us out of bondage this very day." A hack now drove to the door, and the friendly family who had received the fugitives crowded around them with farewell greetings. The hack drove to the wharf. The two young men, as they appeared, walked up the plank into the boat, Eliza gallantly giving her arm to Mrs. Smyth, and George attending to their baggage. George was standing at the captain's office, settling for his party, when he overheard two men talking by his side. "I've watched every one that came on board," said one, "and I know they're not on this boat." The voice was that of the clerk of the boat. The speaker whom he addressed was Marks, the slave-hunter, who had come on to Sandusky, seeking whom he might devour. "You would scarcely know the woman from a white one," said Marks. "The man is a very little mulatto. He has a brand in one of his hands." The hand with which George was taking the tickets and change trembled a little; but he turned coolly around, fixed an unconcerned glance on the face of the speaker, and walked leisurely toward another part of the boat where Eliza stood waiting for him. Mrs. Smyth, with little Harry, sought the seclusion of the ladies' cabin, where the dark beauty of the supposed little girl drew many flattering comments from the passengers. George had the satisfaction, as the bell rang out its farewell peal, to see Marks walk down the plank to the shore; and drew à long sigh of relief when the boat had put a returnless distance between them. It was a superb day. The blue waves of Lake Erie danced rippling and sparkling in the sunlight. A fresh breeze blew from the shore, and the lordly boat ploughed her way right gallantly onward. Oh, what an untold world there is in one human heart! Who thought, as George walked calmly up and down the deck | of the steamer, with his shy companion at his side, of all that was burning in his bosom? The mighty good that seemed approaching seemed too good, too fair, ever to be a reality; and he felt a jealous dread every moment of the day that something would rise to snatch it from him. But the boat swept on-hours fleeted, and, at last, clear and full rose the cod English shore-shores charmed by a mighty spell-with one touch issolve every incantation of slavery, no matter in what language proud, or by what national power confirmed. George and his wife stood arm in arm as the boat neared the small town of Amherstberg, in Canada. His breath grew thick and short; a mist gathered before his eyes; he silently pressed the little hand that lay trembling on his arm. The bell rang the boat stopped. Scarcely seeing what he did, he looked out his baggage, and gathered his little party. The little company were landed on the shore. They stood still till the boat had cleared; and then, with tears and embracings, the husband and wife, with their wondering child in their arms, knelt down and lifted up their hearts to God! ""Twas something like the burst from death to life; Where all the bonds of death and hell are riven, When Mercy's hand hath turned the golden key, And Mercy's voice hath said, 'Rejoice, thy soul is free."" The little party were soon guided by Mrs. Smyth to the hospitable abode of a good missionary, whom Christian charity has placed here as a shepherd to the out-cast and wandering, who are constantly finding an asylum on this shore. Who can speak of the blessedness of that first day of freedom? Is not the sense of liberty a higher and finer one than any of the five? To move, speak and breathe, go out and come in unwatched and free from danger! Who can speak the blessings of that rest which comes down on the free man's pillow, under laws which insure to him the rights that God has given to man? How fair and precious to that mother was that sleeping child's face, endeared by the memory of a thousand dangers! How impossible was it to sleep in the exuberant possession of such blessedness ! And yet these two had not one acre of ground, not a roof that they could call their own, they had spent their whole to the last dollar. They had nothing more than the birds of the air, or the flowers of the field-yet they could not sleep for joy. Oh, ye who take freedom from man, with what words shall ye answer it to God?" 66 |