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which she wrote in an hour of sadness, in consequence of being cut by friends, reproached by relations, and deluged with insulting letters from every part of the South.
Her relatives resort to both coaxing and threatening, to induce her publicly to deny that she wrote the “Autobiography of a female slave.”
The truthfulness of her nature fires up at this.
In one of her letters to me she says, “What a mean thing they would make of me!
I'll die first.”
She is true metal.
and rings clear under their blows.
Yet she has a loving, womanly heart, made desolate and sad by separation front early friends.
We abolitionists ought to rally round the noble young martyr.
I wish you had a chance to get acquainted with her. She struck me as quite a remarkable young person.
More and more I become convinced that there is a natural difference in the organization of people.
There is Mattie, brought up in a slave-holding community, and under the influence of an intensely aristocratic family, vet, from her earliest years, spontaneously giving all her sympathies to the poor.
When she went to school, she was a great pet with a wealthy lady, a friend of her grandfather's. The lady hired :t slave of the grandfather, and caused her to be whipped for some offence.
Mattie heard of it, on her way from school, and rushed into the lady's house to pour forth her boiling indignation.
She called her a “cruel monster,” and told her that “the blue flames of hell were preparing for those who treated poor people so!”
The lady tried to pacify her, and asked her to sit down and have some cake.
“I don't want to sit down in your house” she exclaimed ; and off she went.
The grandfather tried to make her apologize to the lady for her rudeness.
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