BY FRANCES E. W. HARPER. Make me a grave where'er you will, In a lowly plain or a lofty hill; Make it among earth's humblest graves, But not in a land where men are slaves. I ask no monument proud and high, To arrest the gaze of the passers by; All that my yearning spirit craves Is, Bury me not in a Land of Slaves. [86] [86] PHILLIS WHEATLEY. BY L. MARIA CHILD. Phillis Wheatley was born in Africa, and brought to Boston, Massachusetts, in the year 1761,—a little more than a hundred years ago. At that time the people in Massachusetts held slaves. The wife of Mr. John Wheatley of Boston had several slaves; but they were getting too old to be very active, and she wanted to purchase a young girl, whom she could train up in such a manner as to make her a good domestic. She went to the slave-market for that purpose, and there she saw a little girl with no other clothing than a piece of dirty, ragged carpeting tied round her. She looked as if her health was feeble,—probably owing to her sufferings in the slave-ship, and to the fact of her having no one to care for her after she landed. Mrs. Wheatley was a kind, religious woman; and though she considered the sickly look of the child an objection, there was something so gentle and modest in the expression of her dark countenance, that her heart was drawn toward her, and she bought her in preference to several others who looked more robust. She took her home in her chaise, put her in a bath, and dressed her in clean clothes. They could not at first understand her; for she spoke an African dialect, sprinkled with
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