Endowed with natural talents, they are readily instructed in every
accomplishment, requisite to constitute them charming companions. Often
as a carriage dashes by, the pedestrian is able to catch a glimpse of
some jewelled and turbaned sultana, of dazzling beauty, attended by her
maid, who does not always possess a sinecure, for the mistress is often
haughty, proud, and petulant, very hard to please, and exacts great
deference from her inferiors. Many of them live in regal splendour, and
everything that wealth and pampered luxury can bestow is theirs, as long
as their personal charms remain; but when their beauty has ceased to
gratify the passions of their masters, they are, in most instances, cast
off, and frequently die in a condition which presents the greatest
possible contrast to their former gay but not happy life.
"Oh that they had earlier died,
Sleeping calmly side by side,
Where the tyrant's power is o'er,
And the fetter galls no more."
Many of such poor outcasts are to be found scattered all over the slave
states, some employed as field hands, but in general they are selected
as domestics, their former habits of luxury and ease rendering their
constitutions too delicate for the exposure of ordinary field labour.
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