Yoked with the brutes, and fettered to the soil;
Weighed in a tyrant’s balance with his gold?
No! Nature stamped us in a heavenly mould!
She bade no wretch his thankless labor urge,
Nor, trembling, take the pittance and the scourge.”
From this time I became deeply interested in my African protege. He seemed keenly alive to his condition. He told me in a conversation that “the colored people were all heathens—they knew nothing. I was talking,” he added, “with massa and missus dis mornin’, and missus asked me, ‘Tom what you tink of dem Yankees?’
“‘Ah,’ says I, ‘missus, I don’ don’t like em at all. Dey won’t have nothin’ to say to a nigger.’ Den missus said, ses she.
“‘Tom, don’t you know dese Yankees are comin’ down har to confisticate all you cullod people?’ Now, she tink I don’ don’t know what ‘confisticate’ means; spec’ she tinks I tought it was to kill. God bless you, massa, I knows it is to free de darkies, and den dis pore nigger have hoss and carriage, if I don’ can work and pay for ’em. While I was talkin’ wid massa and missus, I stood and shake all over. I tells ’em dat I is so ’feared dat dey would come dat I don’t know what for to do. God bless you, don’t you tink dey was fool enough to tink I was afeerd. Ha! ha! ha!”
The hours wore heavily on in that dreary prison-house. Tom brought our food in an old trough, which had doubtless been employed in feeding swine, and we were compelled to take in food in genuine primitive style. In a short time, we received intelligence that we were to be removed to another apartment in the same building, and I began to feel a degree of uneasiness lest my effort to escape should be discovered by the hole in the floor. Tom again befriended me. He ascertained that a printing-press was to be put up in the room the prisoners had occupied, and while assisting in the work succeeded in placing a portion of the stationary materials in such a manner as to effectually secrete the aperture.
As I have already intimated, our supply of food grew “smaller by degrees and horribly less.” Our gastronomic propensities were however, occasionally regaled by some delicacies (?) smuggled in to us by Tom and his brother Pete. We did not care then to inquire whether they obtained them honestly or not, but the probability is that they were appropriated from their master’s larder.