midnight
These white boys were sent on an errand with their cart , and to increase its momentum down hill , and , withal , to tease and worry a fellow-creature , with a skin not colored like their own , they made this poor slave-boy get in . She should have seen the poor creature trudging home , up hill , under a Southern sun , after the little white tyrants had done with him , unless it was the case , which we more than half suspect , that the ride was a stratagem to convey the poor child to the auction-block . ` How the merry dogs , ' the white boys , must have laughed at this Northern lady 's complacent looks at them . She had no tears for the poor old white-headed negro , who , hearing the word ` school ' from the lips of his white young masters , had such a rush of sorrow come over his soul at the thought of the midnight ignorance in which the slave-driver 's whip had kept him , that he actually dropped his burden in the public street , and uttered incautious words , for which , no doubt , old as he was , he caught a terrible flogging . `` Why , in the name of humanity , did not the authoress load her pages , as she might so easily have done , with scenes like that in the cars ? There is slavery ! patent !