Wall, they had lost it all. The honor of bein’ an American citizen bore down pretty heavy on him, and he had to give it up.
Wall, twice did Felix try to get a home for himself and his wife in the Southern States.
But both times, on one pretext or another, did the dominant power deprive him of his earnings, and take his home from him.
Felix had a good heart; and once, the last time he tried to make a home under Southern skies, this good heart wuz the cause of his overthrow.
He barely escaped with his life for darin’ to harbor a white teacher who had left his home and gone down South, followin’ the Bible precepts “to seek and save them that was lost, and preach the Gospel to every creature.”
He taught a small colored school week days and preached in an old empty barn on Sundays.
Little Ned went to his school and wuz greatly attached to him.
But when he wuz ordered to leave the State within twenty-four hours, because “he wuz tryin’ to teach them brute cattle jest as if they wuz humans”—
Bein’ frightened and made sick by the violence of his discharge and the stingin’ arguments with which they enforced their orders, Felix opened his poor cabin-door and sheltered him; then agin his home wuz surrounded with a band of armed, masked men, and they only managed to escape with their lives, and Felix agin left all his poor little improvements on his home behind him.
He and his family and the white teacher, bruised but undaunted, got to the railroad by walkin’ almost all night, and so escaped out of their hands.