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| 582 THE UNDERGROUND RAIL ROAD. from her mistress about nine months since, and •was secreted in the room of an acquaintance, who was cook iu a distinguished slave-holding family in Washington; her intention being, there to wait until all search should be over, and an opportunity offer of escape to the North. But, as yet, no such epportnnity had presented itself; at least none tliat was available, and for nine long months had that poor girl been confined in the narrow limits of the cook's chamber, watched over day and night by that faithful friend with a vigilance as sleepless as it was disinterested. The time had now come, however, when something must be done. The family in whose house she is hid is about to be broken up, and the house to be vacated, and the girl must either be rescued from her peril, or she, and all her accomplices must be exposed. What to do uniler these circumstances was the question which brought this woman to Philadelphia. I advised her to the best of my ability, and sent her away hopeful, if not rejoicing. But in many of these cases we can render no aid whatever. All we can do is to commend them to the God of the oppressed, ami labor on for the day of general deliverance. But, oh! the horrors of this hell-born system, and the havoc made by this, its last foul offspring, the Fugitive Slave law. The anguish, the terror, the agouy inflicted by this infamous statute, must be wit-jessed to be fully appreciated. You must hear the tale of the broken-hearted mother, who has just received tidings that her son is in the hands of man-thieves. You must listen to the impassioned appeal of the wife, whose husband's retreat has been discovered, and -whose footsteps are dogged by the blood-hounds of Slavery. You must hear the husband, as I did, a few weeks ago, himself bound and helpless, beg you for God's sake to save his wife. You must see such a woman as Hannah Dellam, with her noble-looking boy at her side, pleading in vain before a pro-slavery judge, that she is of right free, that her son is entitled to his freedom; and above all, that her babe, about to be born, should be permitted to open its eyes upon the light of liberty. You must hear the judge's decision, remorselessly giving up the woman -with her children born and unborn, into the bauds of tlieir claimants—by them to be carried to the slave prison, and thence to be sold to a returnless distance from the remaining' but scattered fragments of her once happy family. These things you" must see and hear for yourself before you am form any adequate idea of the bitterness of this cup which the unhappy children of oppression along this southern border are called upon to drink. Manifestations like these have we been obliged either to witness ourselres, or hear the recital of from others, almost daily, for weeks together. Our aching hearts of late, have known but little respite. A shadow has been oust over our home circles, and a check been given to the wonted cheerfulness of our families. One night, the night that the woman and the boy and the unborn babe received their doom, my wife, long after midnight, literally wept herself to sleep. For the last fortnight we have had no new |