I was represented (as it was said) in my
true colours; but she, 'warranted,' snapping her fingers,
'that she should break my spirit or heart.'
"My mother replied, with a whine, 'that if any body could make
me better, it was such a clever woman as herself; though, for her
own part, she had tried in vain; but good-nature was her fault.'
"I shudder with horror, when I recollect the treatment I had
now to endure. Not only under the lash of my task-mistress, but
the drudge of the maid, apprentices and children, I never had a
taste of human kindness to soften the rigour of perpetual labour.
I had been introduced as an object of abhorrence into the family;
as a creature of whom my step-mother, though she had been kind
enough to let me live in the house with her own child, could make
nothing. I was described as a wretch, whose nose must be kept to
the grinding stone--and it was held there with an iron grasp. It
seemed indeed the privilege of their superior nature to kick me
about, like the dog or cat. If I were attentive, I was called
fawning, if refractory, an obstinate mule, and like a mule I received
their censure on my loaded back.
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