apprehension of sorrow; and the confinement that froze her into a
nook of existence, with an unvaried prospect before her, the most
insupportable of evils. The lamp of life seemed to be spending itself
to chase the vapours of a dungeon which no art could dissipate.--And
to what purpose did she rally all her energy?--Was not the world a vast
prison, and women born slaves?

Though she failed immediately to rouse a lively sense of injustice
in the mind of her guard, because it had been sophisticated into
misanthropy, she touched her heart. Jemima (she had only a claim to a
Christian name, which had not procured her any Christian privileges)
could patiently hear of Maria's confinement on false pretences; she had
felt the crushing hand of power, hardened by the exercise of injustice,
and ceased to wonder at the perversions of the understanding, which
systematize oppression; but, when told that her child, only four
months old, had been torn from her, even while she was discharging the
tenderest maternal office, the woman awoke in a bosom long estranged
from feminine emotions, and Jemima determined to alleviate all in her
power, without hazarding the loss of her place, the sufferings of a
wretched mother, apparently injured, and certainly unhappy. A sense of
right seems to result from the simplest act of reason, and to preside
over the faculties of the mind, like the master-sense of feeling, to
rectify the rest; but (for the comparison may be carried still farther)
how often is the exquisite sensibility of both weakened or destroyed by
the vulgar occupations, and ignoble pleasures of life?

The preserving her situation was, indeed, an important object to Jemima,
who had been hunted from hole to hole, as if she had been a beast of
prey, or infected with a moral plague. The wages she received, the
greater part of which she hoarded, as her only chance for independence,