And feelin’ as he did, is it any wonder that all his mind and heart wuz sot on this skeme of Victor’s, and all his hopes and aims pinted towards a new home, where he could take his wife and child and be free? where he felt that he could own them and own a right to make a home for ’em—a home where the American eagle, proud bird of Liberty, could nevermore tear him with her talons, or claw his trustin’ eyes out with her sharp bill?
He felt this, but the eagle wuzn’t to blame—it wuz her keepers, if he had only known it. The eagle wuz in a hard place. I felt real sorry for the fowl, and have for a number of times. She has been in many a tight place before now—places where it wuz all she could do to squeeze out her wings and shake ’em a mite.
Wall, Felix worked hard, and so did Hester, with this end in view—to go fur away and be at rest.
Felix, after many efforts, got a place as workman on a big buildin’ that wuz bein’ put up; and Hester got a place as fine washerwoman and laundress with good wages.
They lived cheap as they could, and at the time when I first hearn about ’em (from Genieve) they had got about the amount saved that Victor thought they would require.
Felix wanted at least four or five hundred dollars to start with. You see, he and Victor could look ahead, which is more than some of their mother’s race can do.
Felix knew he had got to have something to live on for the first year after he got to the Promised Land. He didn’t mean to pin his faith onto anybody or anything. He felt that his family’s safety and well-bein’ depended on him, and he wuz bound to labor with that end in view.
And Victor wuz workin’ as hard as Felix; workin’ quietly and secretly as possible, deemin’ that the best way to avert danger from them and make success possible.
He wuz workin’ as a standard-bearer, a tryin’ to make his people hear his cry to move forward into the Promised Land, into their own land, from whence they had been torn with violence, but to which they should return with knowledge and wisdom learned in the hard school of martyrdom and slavery.
He knew that to preach this doctrine to all his people would be like tryin’ to stop the course of the wind by a shout.