“Well, I began to grow home-sick; and when he was cross and abusive, I used to think of mistress.
“Master was a cabinet-maker; and so next day, says he, ‘I’m agoin’ to make you larn the trade,’ and he sets me to planin’ rough cherry boards; and when it come night, my arms was so lame I couldn’t lift ’em to my head, pushin’ the jack-plane; and he kept me at this cabinet work till the first day of May, when I got so I could make a pretty decent bedstead. I come to live with him the first of March, and now he begins to fix and git ready for to move out to the new countries. Well, when we was a packin’ up the tools, I happened to hit a chisel agin’ a hammer, and dull it a little, and he gets mad, and cuffs me, and thrashes me ’bout the shop, and swears like a pirate. I says, ‘Master, I sartinly didn’t mean to do it.’ ‘You lie, you black devil, you did,’ he says; ‘and if you say another word, I’ll split your head open with the broad-axe.’ Well, I felt bad ’nough, but said nothin’. He advertised all his property pretty much, and sold it at vendue; and now we was nearly ready for a start. Master had promised to let me go and see sister Hagar, and mother, a few days afore we started; and as he was gone, mistress told me I might go. So I had liberty, and I detarmined to use it. I had catched six large muskrats, and had the skins, and thinks I to myself, what’s mine is my own; and so I went up stairs, and wraps a paper round ’em, and flings ’em out the window, and puts out with them for town, and sold ’em for a quarter of a dollar a piece. I went Friday; but I didn’t see mother, for she was gone away, and Sunday I spent visiting Hagar, and that night I got home. While I was gone they had found out the skins was a missin’; and soon as I’d got home, I see somethin’ was to pay; for master looked dreadful wrothy when I come in, and none of the family said a word, ‘how de,’ nor nothing, only Lecta, one of the gals, asked me how the folks did, and if I had a good visit; and she kept a talkin’, and finally, the old lady kind a scowled at her, (you see the muskrat skins set hard on her stomach,) and finally, master looked at me cross enough to turn milk sour, and says he, ‘Nigger, do you know anything ’bout them skins?’ Says I, ‘No, Sir;’ and I lied, it’s true, but I was scart. And says he, ‘you lie, you black devil.’ So I stuck to it, and kept a stickin’ to it, and he kept a growing madder, and says he, ‘If you don’t own it, I’ll whip your guts out.’ So he goes and gits a long whip and bed-cord, and that scart me worser yit, and I had to own it, and I confessed I had the money I got for ’em, all but a sixpence I had spent for gingerbread; and he searched my pocket, and took it all away, and half a dollar besides, that Mary Brown gin me to remember her by!! ☜—and then he gin me five or six cuts over the head, and says he, ‘Now, you dam nigger, if I catch you in another such lie, I’ll cut your dam hide off on ye;’ and then he drives me off to bed, without any supper; and he says, ‘If you ain’t down airly to make a fire, I’ll be up arter ye with a raw hide.’
“Well, next day we went to fixin’ two kivered wagons for the journey; and, arter we’d got all fixed to start, he sends me over to his mother’s to shell some seed corn, upstairs, in a tub. Well, I hadn’t slept ’nough long back, and so, in spite of my teeth, I got to sleep in the tub. He comes over there, and finds me asleep in the tub, and he takes up a flail staff and hits me over the head, and cussed and swore, and telled his mother to see I didn’t git to sleep, nor have anything to eat in all day. Well, arter he’d gone, the old lady called me down, and gin me a good fat meal, and telled me to go up and shell corn as fast as I could. Well, I did, and it come night—I got a good supper, and put out for home; and I’ve always found the women cleverer than the men—they’re kind’a tender-hearted, ye know.
“Well, we got ready, and off we started, and I guess ’twas the 9th of May; and I drove a team of four horses, and it had the chist of tools and family; and he drove another team, full of other things, and his brother-in-law, Mr. Abers, who was agoin’ out to larn the trade; and Abers was mighty good to me.
“Well, we started for York State, and one night we stayed in Newark, and I thought ’twas a dreadful handsome place; for you could see New York and Brooklyn from there, and the waters round New York, that’s the handsomest waters I ever see, and I have seen hundreds of harbors.
“Next day we got to a place called Long Cummin, and put up at a Mr. Starling’s, and he kept a store and tavern, and they was fine folks. In the evenin’ Mr. Starling comes into the kitchen where I was a sittin’ by the fire, holdin’ one of the children in my lap, and he slaps me on the shoulder, and master comes in too, and says he, ‘Morehouse, what will you take for that boy, cash down? I want him for the store and tavern, and run arrants, &c.’ Master says, ‘I don’t want to sell him.’—’Well,’ says Starling, ‘I’ll give you $200 cash in hand.’ Master says, ‘I wouldn’t take 500 silver dollars for that boy, for I mean to have the workin’ of that nigger myself.’ ‘Well,’ says Starling, ‘you’d better take that, or you won’t git anything, for he’ll be running off bi’m’bye.’ And I tell ye, I begun to think ’bout it myself, about that time. Well, I went to bed, and thought about it, and wanted to stay with Starling; and next mornin’ Mrs. Starling comes to master, and says she, ‘I guess you’d better sell that boy to my husband, for he’s jist the boy we want to git:’ and says I, ‘Master, I wants to stay here, and I wish you’d sell me to these ’ere folks;’—and with that he up and kicked me, and says he, ‘If I hear any more of that from you, I’ll tie ye up, and tan your black hide; and now go, and up with the teams.’ Well, when we got all ready to start, I wanted to stay, and I boohooed and boohooed; and Mr. Starling says to master, ‘I want your boy to come in the store a minute;’ and I went in, and he out with a bag of Bungtown coppers, and gin me a hull pocket full, and says he, ‘Peter, I wish you could live with me, but you can’t; and you must be a good boy, and when you git to be a man you’ll see better times, I hope;’ and I cried, and took on dreadfully, and bellowed jist like a bull; for you know, when a body’s grieved, it makes a body feel a good deal worse to have a body pity ’em. I see there was no hope, and I mounted the box, and took the lines, and driv off; but I felt as bad as though I had been goin’ to my funeral. Oh! it seemed to me they was all happy there, and they was so kind to me, and they seemed to be so good, it almost broke my heart: I had every thing to eat—broiled shad, cake, apple pie, (I used to be a great hand for apple pie,) rice pudden’ and raisins in it, beefsteak, and all that; and the children kept a runnin’ round the table, and sayin’, ‘Peter must have this, and Peter must have that;’ and I kept a thinkin’ as I drove on, how they all kept flocking round me when we come away, and I cried ’bout it two or three days, and every time master come up, he’d give me a lick over my ears, ‘cause I was a cryin’. If I should die I couldn’t think of the next place where we stayed all night. We travelled thirty miles, and the tavern keeper’s name was Henry Williams. Well, the day arter, we had a very steep hill to go down, and the leaders run on fast, and I couldn’t hold ’em, and when we got to the bottom, master hollered, ‘Stop!’ and up he come, and whipped me dreadfully, and kicked me with a pair of heavy boots so hard in my back, I was so lame I couldn’t hardly walk for three or four days, and everybody asked me what was the matter. The next place we stopped at, the tavern keeper’s folks was old, and real clever; and master telled ’em not to let me have any supper but buttermilk, and that set me to cryin’, and I boohooed a considerable; and the darter says, ‘Come, mother, let’s give Peter a good supper, and his master will pay for it, tu;’ and so they did; and as I was a settin’ by the fire, she axed me, and I telled her all ’bout how I was treated, and says she, ‘Why don’t you run away, Peter? I wouldn’t stay with sich a man: I’d run, if I had to stay in the woods.’ Next mornin’ the old man was mad ’nough when he see the bill for my buttermilk, and swore a good deal ’bout it. Next day we come to the ‘Beach Woods,’ and ’twas the roughest road you ever see, and the wheels would go down in the mud up to the hubs, then up on a log; and he’d make me lift the wheels as hard as I any way could, and he wouldn’t lift a pound, and stood over me with his whip, and sung out, ‘lift, you black devil, lift.’ And I did lift, till I could fairly see stars, and go back and forth from one wagon to t’other, he to whip, and I to lift; and so we kept a tuggin’ through the day till night. That night we stayed to a black man’s tavern; and when we come up, and see ’twas a black man’s house, master was mad ’nough; but he couldn’t git any furder that night, and so he had to be an abolitionist once in his life, any how!!! Well, he didn’t drive that nigger round, I tell ye, he was on tu good footin’: he owned a farm, and fine house, and we had as good fare there as any where on the road.
“The next day the goin’ was so bad we couldn’t git out of the woods, and we had to stay there all night; and oh! what times we did see; I lifted and strained till I was dead: and that night we slept in the wagons—the women took possession of one, and we of t’other; and the woods was alive with wolves and panthers; and such a howlin’ and screamin’ you never heard; but we builds up a large fire, and that kept ’em off. We lay on our faces in the wagon, with our rifles loaded, cocked and primed; and when them ’ere varmints howled, the horses trembled so the harnesses fairly shook on ’em: but there warn’t any more sleep there that night, than there would be in that fire.
“Next day we worried through, and stopped at a house, and got some breakfast of bears’ meat and hasty pudden’; and it come night, we made the ‘Blue Mountain;’ and on the top of it was some good folks; we stayed there one night, and Mr. Cooper, the landlord, come out to the barn, and axed me if I was hired out to that man, or belonged to him? ‘Well,’ said he, ‘if you did but know it, you are free now, for you are in a free state, and it’s agin’ the law to bring a slave from another state into this; and where be you goin’?’ ‘To Cayuga County,’ says I. ‘Well, when you git there, du you show him your backsides, and tell him to help himself.’
The next night we stayed in Owego; but I’m afore my story, for goin’ down the Blue Mountain next day, the leaders run, and I couldn’t hold ’em if I should be shot, and they broke one arm off of the block tongue. Well, I stopped, and master comes runnin’ up, and he fell on, and struck me, and mauled me most awfully; and jist then a man come up on horseback, and says he to master, ‘If you want to kill that boy, why don’t ye beat his brains out with an axe and done with it—but don’t maul him so; for you know, and I know, for I see it all myself, that that boy ain’t able to hold that team, and I shouldn’t a thought it strange if they had dashed every thing to pieces.’ Well, master was mad ’nough, for that was a dreadful rebuke; and says he, ‘You’d better make off with yourself, and mind your own business.’ The man says, ‘I don’t mean to quarrel with you, and I won’t; but I think ye act more like a devil than a man! ☜ So off he went; and I love that man yit!
Next night we stayed in Owego; and the tavern keeper, a fine man, had a talk with me arter bed-time; and says he, ‘Peter, your master can’t touch a hair of your head, and if you want to be free you can, for we’ve tried that experiment here lately; and we’ve got a good many slaves free in this way, and they’re doing well. But if you want to run away, why run; but wait awhile, for you are a boy yit, and there are folks in York State, mean ’nough to catch you and send you back to your master!’ ☜ [[3]]