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learned that there were coloured people in some far off place called Canada who were free. I learned, too, from seeing them reading and writing, that they could make paper and the little black marks on it talk: It is difficult for children who see this from their earliest years to realise the incredulity with which a slave-boy ten years of age regards the schievement of reading when he notices it for the first time. For a long time I could not get it out of my head that the readers were talking to the paper, rather than the paper talking to them. When, how er, it became a reality to me, I made up my mind that I would accomplish the feat myself. But when I asked the white boys with whom I played marbles to teach me how to read, they told me that the daw would not allow it. Now the law was a sort of hobgoblin who had notle stood very high in my opinion ever since he had torn my mother and sister tom me, and me from my home; and as I hoped to get back to my sold home, where I was certain my mother and sister would join me after awhile, I had no disposition to provoke the law to tear me away from where I then was. So, for a time, I abandoned the idea of learning to read. ored to sonsjob! SI But though the white boys would not teach me to read, they could not control or prevent the acquisibons of a quick and retentive memory with which I was blessed, and by their bantering one another at spelling, and betting each on his proficiency over the other, I learned to spell by sound before I knew by sight a single letter in the alphabet.

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lly occupation gave me much time for play, and marbles being the general game of boys in the South, and the spirit of gambling being the prevailing passion with the young as well as with their elders in slaveholding society, Io soon became not only a proficient, but also a wealthy marble player. de re There was a white boy who belonged to the hotel, azad as he was a poor marble player and rather low sock, he proposed to go in partnership with me. This was just what I had tried to get older white boys to do before, but they were either ashamed of having a slave-boy for a partner, or else they coveted ay large stock of marbles, and meant, by combinathe with other boys, to break me, as it is called gaming parlanco. Perhaps they too were afraid of the hw Now I knew that this boy, Eaton Bass, aly wished my partnership that he might have a tanker upon whom to draw, as he was constantly getting “broke.” But as I had designs against him quite as selfish, I readily consented to the terms of partnership. He had no stock to begin with, and, therefore, I insisted on this putting in an equivalent the way of service to me, which service was to ach mo the alphabet, mio i 10-1 299 nevilt good Ho resisted this enticement for some days, for, ng as he was, he had been taught by his parents last he was not to teach a slave to read. But the Tice which has proved itself to be, if not the parent, at least the confederate of all other vices the inAtiation of gaming an infatuation that increases in proportion to the want of skill or the bad luck of

the player was too strong for him, and after three or four days the partnership was solemnly formed by his giving me one of his books as my own, and teaching me my first lesson 72% 37 um, 10

That was a great day for me. When Eaton left me with the A B C ringing in my memory, I saw myself already writing a free-pass, and with it travelling to find my mother and sister; and then, with another that I should write, leading them to Canada. xe tex arrivi' boi si

soon got into the habit of spelling signs: and trying to read placard advertisements for runaway slaves, and so the slaves soon found out that I could spell, and, as they thought, read too.b #!,,「,:,

One Sunday, I was sitting at the back gate of the hotel, when three coloured, men came up to me, and invited me to go with them to the woods to gather wild grapes; and I readily consented to go, as it was something of an honour to be invited by my elders to be their companion. When we got into the woods, instead of their gathering grapes, one of them took from his bosom a newspaper, and, handing it to me, said, Dare, read dat ar, and tell us whut him say 'bout de bobbolishunis," Duder 1 S for zu zi

Had a knife been drawn on me, with a threat of taking my life, I should not have been more astounded. How he had got the idea into his head that I could read, when it was not in my own, was a great wonder, but that he should think I could road a newspaper, and that I could read about the strange bobbolishunis," bewildered me still more.

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However, as they fell to affirming and denying what one of them had heard his master read in this paper, and at the very spot which he had marked and pointed out to me when he handed me the paper, I found time to recover and to determine what to do. This was my course; I reflected first that even though, I could not read, neither could they; and next, that if I refused to pretend I could, they might suspect me of a mere unwillingness to gratify them, or accuse me of fearing to run the risk of being found out. Such an accusation, would carry with it a suspicion of treachery on my part; and should they entertain it, I trembled for my fate, alone as I was with them in the woods, Then, too, it must be remembered that slavery is no great promoter of transparency of character, or of the belief that deception is wrong. This must be my excuse for looking over the paper with the determination to read what I felt they would be pleased to hear, no matter though it should I not be in the paper. I handled the paper with a trembling hand, and, looking to the column pointed out by the slave, to my great surprise, I made out this heading of a leading article: "Henry Clay an Abolitionist." I read on a little further, and found that the editor, in reviewing one of Henry Clay's speeches, tried to show that tendencies were towards Abolitionism. Of course I did not make out fully all the long words, nor did I get any intelligent understanding of the leader, but I made a new discovery about my being able to read at tall, and that, too, in a newspaper. What I read, or pretended to read, gave the most intense satisfaction,

and awakened the wildest hopes about freedom among my hearers, and elevated me to the judgmentseat of a second young Daniel among them.

my former master. I told him I did; and after my telling him where he lived-for I went now and again to see my kind-hearted old mistress and Stephen, though Dr. C. never recovered from his losses-when

That night, after returning to the city, and when the slaves got through with their household duties, II told the waggoner where they lived, he set a time found the kitchen unusually full of the neighbouring slaves; and I remember to this day the ludicrous manoeuvres of many of them to get me apart from the other slaves, that I might read some book or newspaper which they had filched from their masters' libraries. This prepared the way for it to become my regular task to read to them.

This clandestine and all but universal reading for the slaves could not continue long without spite or hope of reward begetting in the breast of some slave the purpose to betray me. So one night, when I came into my master's room, where I slept, he called me to him, and, with a threatening warning as to my telling him a falsehood, asked me if I could read. I thought it safest to own it, and did so. After a great deal of questioning, he thus delivered himself: "I am a Northern man, though I have been here twenty-three years. I have made my money here, and, unlike the Southern spendthrifts, I have kept what I have made. Those among them who hate my country, and hate me for being a Northern man, are nevertheless dependent on me for the loan of my money when they are in pecuniary difficulties. But their dislike of me is only smothered, not extinguished, and they would very readily find cause of accusation against me, because they envy me my money and hate my politics. They are a wild kind of people, and though my leaving here would be a great misfortune to many, there are others who think that to get rid of me is to get rid of their obligations to pay me what they owe me. Nothing would serve the purpose of such better than to prove me, as they already believe me to be, an enemy to slavery. Now, if you go on reading to the slaves, I shall either be compelled to give you up to the City Marshal to be flogged, or sell you. Don't let me hear of your reading to the slaves again."

I told him that it was the Bible I read generally, and certainly there could be no harm in that. "Read nothing to the slaves," he replied, and the conversation ended.

I must confess I did not obey him. For beside the importance which was accorded me as an oracle among the slaves, and the ties which bound me in a confederacy of what, under the circumstances, I felt to be wrong-doing-ties that, in this, as in all cases of wrong-doing, it seemed safer to run the risk of being crushed by, than to attempt to break-besides all this, I got paid for reading, and I was laying up my money to pay my travelling expenses in going to sce my mother, and to purchase something to carry to her as a proof of my love. Not long after this my filial affection found stimulation from an unexpected

for me to go with him to them that night. While we were on the way there, he told me what he might have told me before, namely, that he was going to see if Winnie's son lived with them yet. I trembled all over as I asked her son's name, for I was sure he knew where my mother was. I stopped, and sat down on a stump to collect myself, and when I got strength I told him who I was. "Well," he replied very drily, "Winnie told me to give you dis 'ere;" and he handed me a rag of cotton cloth, tied all about with a string. I opened it, and found some blue glass beads-beads given to my mother by her mother as a keepsake when she died. I knew by that token that he was a messenger from my mother, though of course my mother and myself had had no time to agree on any such thing before we were parted. But I had often heard her say that nothing would make her part with these beads.

I gave the man a silver piece worth a shilling, and asked him if he would go back with me to my home. He readily consented, and, after two hours' conver sation with him, I learned all about my mother's condition, which, according to his account, was a very hard one indeed.

The next morning I met him at the stable where he kept his horses, and, after giving him quite as much as I sent my mother, in the shape of sugar, candies, and calico cloth, I parted with him.

I then began to besiege my master to let me go to see my mother. He seemed glad that I had found out where she was, and promised me that I should shortly go to see her. He promised in the genuineness of his joy to take me himself. But when he got cool on the subject, and reflected how sentimental, and therefore how silly, to slaveholders, it would appear to go sixty miles to the plantation of a slaveholder, with whom he had no business, merely to take a slave-boy to see a slave-woman, he began to dissuade me from the purpose of going; and, at last, told me that he could not go, and that he would not trust me to go alone. This, I am sure, was from no want of feeling, because he said that he would think the matter over about buying my mother, though he had, he said, no desire to buy a slave, as he had never done so..

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About this time there came to the hotel to board, from Montgomery, Alabama, a family named Young, and one morning, a day or two after their arrival, as I was passing through one of the passages near their nursery, I saw a coloured girl, who arrested my attention, and I stopped. Just as I stopped I hoard one of the children call her Linie-the diminutive for Caroline all over the South. Advancing still nearer to the door, I called her too, but by her full One day, when I was talking to a coloured man name, and in a moment or two she came to the door. from the country, who had brought in a load of I could not summon the courage to speak, and cotton, he asked me if I knew such a man as Dr. C., | after a moment's attempt to realise where she was,

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she said, "Is your name Sella? Are you my brother?" We had been separated for years, but happily neither of us had changed much. She soon sent me away, for fear of giving offence to her mistress, who was a sickly, querulous sort of a lady; but at night she got out a little while, and told me of all her adventures, after having heard from me first all the facts of the discovery of the whereabouts of our mother. Mr. Young came to Columbus in search of health for his wife and business for himself, and to my infinite satisfaction he found the latter, and settled there. So I had the happiness of seeing my sister every week till I was sold from Columbus.

It had been a year since I first heard from my mother, and having lost all hope of Mr. Powers going with me to see her, or even consenting that I should go myself, I made up my mind that I would run away and go. Accordingly I wrote me a pass, prepared a parcel of good things to carry to her, and after spending a night with my sister, to get her messages, I set off the next night.

I was fortunate in falling in company with a coloured man who said he was going within a mile of the place. I had provided myself with pen, ink, and paper, to write a pass for my mother, in case she agreed to run away with me. So when this man joined me, I asked him if he had a pass, and offered to write one for him. He accepted my offer. But though he had a pass, he would not, as I wished, travel by day, and even at night he took by-paths. Our journey on this account occupied three nights. At the end of the third night, or about two o'clock in the morning, this man pointed out to me my mother's cabin. Oh! with what anxiety did I approach it! Perhaps, I thought, she may have been sold away since I heard from her, for my companion said he did not know whether she was there still or not, and he seemed to know a great deal. Then, again, as he did not know even whether she was on the place, might he not be mistaken about her cabin; and if I were to wake up some other slave, might not they betray my presence? But supposing my mother here, and this her cabin, how could I awaken her without disturbing the slaves in the adjoining cabin? With thoughts like these I walked around that cabin on a cold night, or rather morning, for an hour. No

wild beast on the point of starvation ever walked with a stealthier tread around the snare that held the food for which he was dying, or eyed it with a more critical, suspicious, but longing look, or ever shivered with irresolution and burned with desire, as I did during that hour. No heart but the heart of a mother or a child in such circumstances can measure the weight of uncertainty, the agony of fear, that pressed me down and consumed me. I had pulled the string of the wooden latch twenty times without success; I had whispered my mother's name at every corner of the cabin again and again, each with the indistinctness and suppressed tone of voice that sprung from a fear that my whisper might be heard by wrong and hostile listeners. I had meditated going down the chimney and run the risk of being

caught as a robber, rather than expose my mother to the charge of harbouring me, should any of the slaves find out I was there. At last I made up my mind to retire to the woods and sleep, and then somehow or other I would secure my mother's attention the next evening early, as she was going into her cabin. I turned away with a sorrowful heart, and went to the fence over which I had clambered to get in. Just as I got upon the fence, some one behind me called out in a suppressed tone, "Who are you?" I had dropped my bag of goods for my mother over the other side of the fence, and I jumped quickly over after it. But my interlocutor was by my side in a minute, and repeated his question. It was pretty dark, and it took me some time to make out what he looked like. After a little he bent his head down close to me, and I recognised him at once as the waggoner from whom I had first learned the whereabouts of my mother. I said to myself, "It's all up' with me! This man lives here, as he told me; and as he was wonderfully reserved in his talk for a slave, and cold in his manner when he told me about my mother, he is very likely, rather than run any risk, to give me up to my mother's master."

When he recognised me he simply said, "Oh, it's Winnie's boy," as if speaking to himself, and as if he expected me to be there, though I had no reason to think that he expected to see me. I answered, yes, I was Winnie's son; but made haste to add that my mother did not know that I was there, and therefore she was not to blame. "What 've I got to do with blaming her?" he rejoined, in that same dry manner of his; and cold as his manner was, it reassured me. "Do you want to see her ?" he asked. I answered hastily that I did, if he would hold her clear of all blame. "That's her business," he said, "not mine. If she will attend to her business, and not act like a fool through her joy at seeing you, she may do well enough." I then told him about my trying to get in, and my fears of being discovered. When I got through my story he simply said to me, "You wait here." I waited: it was an age of anxiety. What, thought I, if he has gone to betray me. He is long, he must be informing his master. But as I remembered his cold, honest way, I felt that he was not a traitor. Presently I heard footsteps, and putting my head up as high as the fence, I saw that there were but two persons, and one a woman. I jumped over the fence into the yard again, and in a few moments I was in my mother's arms.

Three or four hours of converse followed, as sweet as ever mother and child indulged in, as it concerned the blessedness of reunion and the buoyancy of hope for freedom; and as bitter as was ever realised when it touched on the sufferings of a mother, torn from her children for no crime but the colour of her skinsufferings that owed, at least, their physical agony to the lash, which was put in use on account of her attempts to see her children or to learn their fate: for my mother had run away three times to reach Columbus after she found out where I was, and each time had failed, paying for the failure with many drops of

blood from her bare back, upon which I saw the terrible furrows made by the cow-hide. This converse of three or four hours brought in the dull grey: light of the morning, and at my mother's direction I left her cabin and found a hiding-place in the woods among some dry pine straw, where from exhaustion I soon fell asleep.:

About four o'clock in the afternoon I was awakened by hearing persons near me digging in the ground. By careful listening I learned that they were digging a grave. I learned also that it was for one of the slaves who had been killed on the estate that morn ing, which was Sunday. They were evidently afraid of being overheard in their conversation, so that the information I got while listening was very unsatis factory. About eleven o'clock at night, my mother came to me and took me into her cabin, and from her I learned the following story about the tragic end of the slave for whose corpse his fellows were digging the grave.

His name was Flanders, and he had been a terror to negro-drivers all his life, having made up his mind never to submit to a flogging, he inva riably supported his resolution by a resistance which, while it had left upon him many sears of the conflicts, had tended only to strengthen his resolve. He had had about thirty different masters; but the one before the last one had never attempted to flog him, and had given him a good character for industry, though he frankly informed Mr. Terry the man who bought him last, and who was the owner of my mother that he was an unruly and incorrigibly rebellious slave. Mr. Terry had been in early life a negro-driver, and being a man of athletic frame and great physical courage, he prided himself on never having been outdone by a slave's resistance. So when he bought Flanders, he told him that he would subdue him or kill him. In about a month after he purchased Flanders he gave him orders to trim his horse's main and tail on Saturday night. Unable to get the pine knots to make a light sufficient for him to perform this duty on Saturday night, Flanders had left it to Sunday morning, and sleeping rather late from not having to be called to work on Sunday, his master on going to the stable found his commands unfulfilled. He went to the cabin where Flanders slept, and fell upon him while sleeping, with a large hickory club, with which he had provided himself for the purpose. Flanders, though stunned by the blows given him in his sleep, struggled up, and true to his reputation, grappled with his assailant; and athletic as Terry was, he found himself getting so much the worst of the encounter that he cried aloud for help. The slaves soon came to his assistance, and finally, after a severe struggle, overpowered Flanders. Terry ordered him to be taken to the smoke-house, where bacon is hung to be cured, and following the slaves there, he commanded Flanders to be tied with one end of a rope; the other end was thrown over the cross beams which supported the roof, and Flanders was drawn up until the tips of his toes could just touch the ground. Terry then with his own hand

gave Flanders, with a raw hide, four hundred and seven lashes, the number being counted by one of the slaves at Terry's order.1

Angered to madness on account of resistance from Flanders, Terry's blows were laid on so heavily and took such terrible effect, that the blood followed at every stroke, and saturated the ground from the body of the still-defiant slave. This defiance, but angered Terry the more, and he continued to flog his victim till he was insensible. One of the slaves observing his insensibility, called his master's attention to it, and expressed the belief that he was dying. Terry, after giving him a few more blows, accusing him at the same time of “playing 'possum" that is, feigning insensibility ordered him to be taken down. | And Flanders still remaining apparently insensible, he took out his knife, and stuck it in the foot of his victim two or three times. Seeing at last that his victim was beyond the power of feeling, Terry turned to his slaves and said, "Yes, he is dead! And let every que of you take warning by his fate; for I swear that I will kill every slave I own before one of them shall outdo me." - "...

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This all happened early in the morning; so that Mr. Terry, who was a licentiate in the Presbyterian Church, had time to dross and to quiet his perturbed spirit, and to ride upon that same horse, for the neglect of which he had taken the life of a human being, nine miles from his home to preach the Gospel

the glorious Gospel of the blessed God"--to preach the glad tidings of Him who came to open the prison-doors to the captive, to bind up the brokenhearted, and to preach the acceptable year of the Lord." ..

His servant who waited on him to church told my mother, as soon as he got back, that Terry in the course of his sermon, in illustrating some principle which he had laid down, said that that very day he had seen the punishment of a wicked temper. He had," he continued, "nadertaken to give one of his slaves a light brushing, and the resisted; but when he found himself overpowered he became so violent that he died in a fit of anger. 943 30 11,00 4

Of course a tale of horror such as this disposed me to leave this estate as soon as possible; but I could not consent to leave my mother at the mercy of a man whose fiendish temper and consummate hypocrisy allowed him to murder at seven and preach at eleven o'clock, the same day.

| My promise to write a pass with which my mother and I could travel on the road, my horrible forebodings of my mother's end if she stayed on this plantation, and my almost heart-breaking entreaties for her to fly with me, were all answered, though in tears and with the deepest sense of the affection which prompted my entreaties, yet with a mournful shake of the head by my mother. And at last she began to entreat me to leave her and return to my home. I have borne a great deal in my life," she said, " so much that my spirit is crushed and all courage is gone from me, and my body is worn out with labour and the lash. It will not be long, therefore, before I shall be

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