My Young Master: A Novel

by Opie Percival Read

"Make a man of yourself for someone else. Young man, the world is becoming too enlightened to permit of slavery much longer. They tell you that God made slaves. That's an insult to the Almighty. I don't really advise you to leave your master, for I can see that Bob makes your bed as easy as it could well be made; but it is an infamous shame that a young man as intelligent as you can have nothing but a life of bondage to look forward to. It is true that as compared with the others, you walk on rose-buds and sleep on feathered palm, but you are a slave for all that."

He moved up closer to me, put his hand on my shoulder and turned me about as if in the growing darkness he would study the expression of my face, the effect his words had wrought. I trembled under the light weight of his hand, for it was as if freedom from afar off had touched me; but I could give no ear to this bold man's suggestion. I had read many a book conceived by great minds that abhored servility, poets that had shaken their fists in the faces of the earth's annointed, orators whose last utterances were cried aloud for the freedom of man, not the white man alone, but man. All my life I had been tapping upon the head the ambitions that arose within me, killing them and seeing their skeletons bleach in the desert of my fancy; and with a stout and determined heart I could have turned my back upon Old Master, for his years were nearly spent; but I could not leave the young man, though the incense of freedom filled my nostrils. Not many miles away flowed the Ohio River. Beyond that stream were thousands of people who would be glad to help me, would regard it a duty which they owed to their religion; and farther away was a British domain, where all men were free—the way was clear, but in that direction I could not have stirred from that rock. My heart was my real master.

"Mr. Clem," said I, and I must have sobbed, for he turned away to hide his own face, "I may be a fool, but I cannot be a traitor to my affections. I wear a chain, but it is made of gold, and I would rather exchange it for one of iron than to know that Bob Gradley had lost confidence in me. I know that I could amount to something in the world—I feel it; I am convinced that I could go to the North and help free the wretched creatures in the far South, but I should have to speak against my Young Master and that I could not do." He caught my hand with a tight grip, and I continued: "I value your kindness; I know that it is genuine, but I must ask you not to tempt me again."

And still harder did he grip my hand as he replied: "There is a salt of the earth and it never loses its savor, and you are of that salt. If you had come to me and begged me to point out the road to freedom, I might have sent you to your Master; your fidelity and strength caused me to speak to you in your behalf. But I did not know the full measure of that strength and fidelity. I know now and I honor you. But keep to your books; the time will come."

Suddenly he broke away and turned on a trot toward the turn-pike, not far off. I heard the hoofs of a horse beating on the hard macadam, and soon I heard this queer man shout, "Hi, there; who ever you are. Hold on a minute. Believe I can give you a better horse for the one you are riding." The hoofs fell slower, and a voice replied: "That you, Clem Gradley? Don't want to transact that sort of business with you—Came in one of having to walk after the last swap. Another whet and I couldn't more than crawl."

The hoofs fell faster and Mr. Clem, chuckling mirthfully, returned to the rock. It was now quite dark and I could not see his face, but I knew that he was in favor with himself, for he had clapped his hat on the back part of his head (a good-humored bravado characteristic of him) and continued to shake with joviality.

"I think that was Lige Berry," he said. "They told me that he had nipped everybody in this county, but I guess I skinned him a little. That's the way to do, Dan. When they try to skin you, skin them. Suppose we go on toward the house? Yes, sir-ree," he continued as we walked along, "skin the skinners in a horse trade. And skin anybody else for that matter. Everything is fair in a horse trade—you've got to be slick and believe nothing. I remember starting out once on an old mule. I had owned a steamboat and it had burnt up without a copper of insurance. I thought I'd make my way to St. Louis and there get something to do. A captain offered me passage on his boat, but I told him no, that I would try the luck of going overland. Well, as I tell you, I set out on that old mule, bought on credit for twenty-three dollars. I was a long time on the road, months, I might say, but when I got to St. Louis I drove in about as fine a lot of horses as you ever saw. And three weeks afterward I steamed up the Illinois River on a boat of my own. I swapped it for a stock of goods in old Salem—always somebody in that town ready to swap off his store, knowing that he couldn't get the worst of it—and I staid there until I went broke. I don't know why I never could hold on to anything. I am great up to a certain point, and then I go to pieces. Why, if I had owned this farm I would have made it three times as large and then lost it all. I've done most everything except to sponge on people, and I never could do that. Set up a drug store in a little place called 'Prophet's Town' on Rock River. Didn't know anything about drugs—helped a feller too liberally to something his prescription called for and poisoned him. He didn't die, but I thought it was time for me to get out of that sort of business. Yes, and I practiced law. Didn't know anything about law, but I could talk. Defended a feller and they hanged him. Of course that might have happened with anybody—with Lincoln himself, for that matter—but a prejudice was raised against me. It tickled Lincoln. Of course he didn't want to see the man hanged, but he had to laugh at me. 'Gradley,' he said to me shortly afterward, 'I want you to do me a favor. I have an enemy, a man that has always stood in my path, and I want him removed. You can do it. I will have it whispered about that he is a thief; you defend him and they'll send him to the penitentiary for life!'"

The supper bell was now ringing and I hastened into the house to take my place behind Young Master's chair. He had many a time commanded me to leave off this useless act of servitude, but such a favoritism would have inflamed Old Miss against me, so I insisted upon a continuance of the office.

Old Master and Old Miss were Hard-Shell Baptists and at supper there was present an old and honored exponent of that faith, Elija Brooks. He visited us often, but Bob and I had a stronger cause than this to call him to mind. Once we had taken his rubber overshoes and made a town-ball of them and had been severely whipped for our enterprise. The old gentleman refused to erase this, our act of meanness, from his mind, and whenever he looked at me I felt that my soul was surely lost. Upon this visit he was in higher spirits. Out in his neighborhood, we were soon informed, a man discovered to be an abolitionist had been tarred and feathered, an example of God's avenging wrath; and the old man's mouth appeared to water with the delicious recollection of the sight. "They came to my house," he said as he passed his plate for a Shanghai rooster's breast, "and asked my opinion in case the fellow was found guilty. I took down the good book and sought instruction, and I think that I modified his punishment when I recommended tar and feathers. Ah, Brother Guilford, the ways of the devil are many and sly; we must keep a constant lookout for him."