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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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It was an order, written in Marie’s delicate Italian hand to the master of a whipping-establishment, to give the bearer fifteen lashes. “What have you been doing?” said Miss Ophelia. “You know, Miss Feely, I’ve got such a bad temper; it’s very bad of me. I was trying on Miss Marie’s dress and she slapped my face; and I spoke out before I thought and was saucy; and she said that she’d bring me down and have me know, once for all, that I wasn’t going to be so topping as I had been; and she wrote this and says I shall carry it. I’d rather she’d kill me, right out.” Miss Ophelia stood considering, with the paper in her hand. “You see, Miss Feely,” said Rosa, “I don’t mind the whipping so much, if Miss Marie or you was to do it; but to be sent to a man! and such a horrid man,- the shame of it, Miss Feely!” Miss Ophelia well knew that it was the universal custom to send women and young girls to whipping-houses to the hands of the lowest of men,- men vile enough to make this their profession,- there to be subjected to brutal exposure and shameful correction. She had known it before; but hitherto she had never realized it, till she saw the slender form of Rosa almost convulsed with distress. All the honest blood of womanhood, the strong New England blood of liberty, flushed to her cheeks, and throbbed bitterly in her indignant heart; but, with habitual pru- dence and self-control, she mastered herself, and, crushing the paper firmly in her hand, she merely said to Rosa, |
