A. “Yes, and we’ll be soon under way.—And now, Peter, I have perfect confidence in your veracity, but I want you to watch every word you utter, for ’twill all be read by ten thousand folks, and I wouldn’t send out any exaggerated statement, or coloured story, for all the books in Christendom. You know it’s hard to tell ‘the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth;’ and now you will have plenty of time to think, for I can’t write as fast as you will talk, and I want you to think carefully, and speak accurately, and we’ll have a true story, and I think a good one.”
P. “I’ll take good care of that, Mr. L—— and we’ll have a true story if we don’t have a big one; but I’m a thinkin’ that afore we git through we’ll have a pretty good yarn spun, as the sailors say. I always thought ’twas bad enough to tell one lie, but a man must be pretty bad to tell one in a book, for if he has ten thousand books printed, he will print ten thousand lies, and that’s lying on tu big a scale.”
A. “Well, Peter, in what age, and quarter of the world were you born?”
P. “As near as I can find out, I was born the 1st of January 1789, at Little Egg Harbour, a parish of Tuckertown, New Jersey. I was born a slave ☜—and many a time, like old Job, I’ve cussed the day I was born. My mother has often told me, that my great grandfather was born in Africa, and one day he and his little sister was by the seaside pickin’ up shells, and there come a small boat along shore with white sailors, and ketches ’em both, and they cried to go back and see mother, but they didn’t let ’em go, and they took ’em off to a big black ship that was crowded with negroes they’d stole; and there they kept ’em in a dark hole, and almost starved and choked for some weeks, they should guess, and finally landed ’em in Baltimore, and there they was sold. Grandfather used to set and tell these ’ere stories all over to mother, and set and cry and cry jist like a child, arter he’d got to be an old man, and tell how he wanted to see mother on board that ship, and how happy he and his sister was, a playing in the sand afore the ship come; and jist so mother used to set and trot me on her knee, and tell me these ’ere stories as soon as I could understand ’em—”
“Well, as I was sayin’, I was born in Tuckertown, and my master’s name was Job Mather. He was a man of family and property, and had a wife and two sons, and a large plantation. He was a Quaker by profession, and used to go to the Quaker meetin’s; but afore I git through with him, I’ll show you he warn’t overstocked with Religion. He was the first and last Quaker I ever heard on, that owned a slave,[[1]] and he warn’t a full-blooded Quaker, for if he had been, he wouldn’t owned me; for a full-blooded Quaker won’t own a slave. I was the only slave he owned, and he didn’t own me ☜ but this, is the way he come by me.[[2]] Mistress happened to have a child the same time I was born, and the little feller died. So she sent to Dinah my mother, and got me to nuss her, when I was only eight days old.”
[1]. Would to God, it could be said of any other denomination of Christians in Christendom!!
[2]. A grand distinction for some big Doctors to learn!
“Well, arter I’d got weaned, and was about a year old, mother comes to mistress, and says she, ‘Mistress, have you got through with my baby?’ ‘No,’ says Mistress, ‘no Dinah, I mean to bring him up myself.’ And so she kept me, and called me Peter Wheeler, for that was my father’s name, and so I lived in master’s family almost jist like his own children.”
“The first thing I recollect was this:——Master and Mistress, went off up country on a journey, and left I and John, (John was her little boy almost my age,) with me at home, and says she as she goes away, ‘now boys if you’ll be good, when I come back, I’ll bring you some handsome presents.’”
“Well, we was good, and when she comes back, she gives us both a suit of clothes, and mine was red scarlet, and it had a little coat buttoned on to a pair of trousers, and a good many buttons on ’em, all up and down be-for’ard and behind, and I had a little cap, with a good long tostle on it; and oh! when I first got ’em on, if I didn’t feel big, I won’t guess.”