Oh! I exclaimed as I entered my study, and sat down before a bright, cheerful fireside, and was greeted with the kind look of an affectionate wife, as the storm howled over the mountains, Oh! God made man to be free, and he must be a wretch, and not a man, who can quench all this social light forever. I hate not slavery so much for its fetters, and whips, and starvation, as for the blight and mildew it casts upon the social and moral condition of man. Oh! enslave not a soul—a deathless spirit—trample not upon a mind, ’tis an immortal thing. Man perchance may light anew the torch he quenches, but the soul! Oh! tremble and beware—lay not rude hands upon God’s image there—I thought of the vast territory that stretches from the Atlantic to the foot of the Rocky Mountains, and from our Southern border to the heart of our Capitol, as one mighty altar of Mammon—where so much social light is sacrificed and blotted from the universe; where so many deathless spirits, that God made free as the mountain wild bird, are chained down forever, and I kneeled around my family altar, and I could not help uttering a prayer from the depths of my soul, for the millions of God’s creatures, and my brethren, who pass lives of loneliness and sorrow in a world which has been lighted up with the Redeemer’s salvation. What a scene for man to look at when he prays: A God who loves to make all his creatures happy! A world which groans because man is a sinner! A man who loves to make his brother wretched! Oh! thought I, if prayer can reach a father’s ear to-night, one yoke shall be broken, and one oppressed slave shall go free.
CHAPTER III.
They get into a wild country, “full of all kinds of varmints,” and begin to build—Peter knocked off of a barn by his master—story of a rattlesnake charming a child—Peter hews the timber for a new house, and gets paid in lashes—Tom Ludlow an abolitionist—Peter’s friends all advise him to run off—the fox-tail company, their expeditions on Oneida Lake—deer stories—Rotterdam folks—story of a pain’ter—master pockets Peter’s share of the booty and bounty—the girls of the family befriend him—a sail on the Lake—Peter is captain, and saves the life of a young lady who falls overboard, and nearly loses his own—kindly and generously treated by the young lady’s father, who gives Peter a splendid suit of clothes worth seventy dollars, and “a good many other notions”—his master ☞ steals his clothes ☜ and wears them out himself—Mr. Tucker’s opinion of his character, and Peter’s of his fate.
Author. “Well, Peter, you found yourself in a wild country, out there in Cayuga, I reckon.”
Peter. “You’re right, there’s no mistake ’bout that; most every body lived in loghouses, and the woods was full of wild varmints as they could hold; well, as soon as we’d got there, we went to buildin’ a log house; for see master owned a large farm out there, and as soon as we gits there we goes right on to work; we finally got the house up, and gits into it, and durin’ the time I suffered most unaccountably. There we went to buildin’ a log barn tu, and we had to notch the logs at both ends to fay into each other; well, as I was workin’ on ’em, I got one notched, and we lifted it up breast high to put it on, and he sees ’twas a leetle tu short, and nobody was to blame, and if any body ’twas him, for he measured it off; but he no sooner sees it, than he drops his end, and doubles up his fist, and knockes me on the temples, while I was yit a holdin’ on, and down I went, and the log on me, and oh! how he swore! well, it struck my foot, and smashed it as flat as a pancake, and in five minutes it swelled up as big as a puffball, and I couldn’t hardly walk for a week, and yit I had to be on the move all the time, and he cussed cause I didn’t go faster. When I gits up I couldn’t only stand on one leg, but he made me stand on it, and lift up that log breast high, but he didn’t lift a pound, but cried out ‘lift, lift, you black cuss.’ Well, we got the logs up, and when we was a puttin’ the rafters on, I happened to make a mistake in not gittin’ one on ’em into the right place, and he knocked me off of the plate, where I was a standin’ and I and the rafter went a tumblin’ together, down to the ground. It hurt me distressedly, and I cried, but gits up, and says, ‘master, I thinks you treat me rather.’ ‘Stop your mouth, you black devil, or I’ll throw these ’ere adz at your head;’ and I had to shet my mouth, pretty sudden, tu, and keep it shet, and he made me lift up that rafter when I couldn’t hardly stand, and keep on to work; and there I set on the evesplate a tremblin’ jist like a leaf, and every move he made, I ’spected he’d hurl me off agin’, and his voice seemed like a tempest—oh! how savage! But he didn’t knock me off agin’—I had to thatch that barn in the coldest kind of weather, with nothin’ but ragged thin clothes on; and I used to git some bloody floggin’s, cause I didn’t thatch fast enough.
“But I’ve talked long ’nough ’bout him, and jist for amusement, I’m a goin’ to tell ye a story ’bout a rattlesnake, and you may put it in the book, or not, jist as ye like.
“We lived, as I was a tellin’, in a dreadful wild country, and ’twas full of all kinds of wild varmints—wolves, and panthers, and bears, was ’mazin plenty, and rattlesnakes mighty thick; and so one day, as we comes into dinner, mistress seemed to be rather out of humor, and she sets the baby down on the floor in a pet, and he crawls under the bed, and begins to be very full of play. He’d laugh, and stick his little hands out, and draw ’em back, and, as my place in summer was generally on the outside door, on the sill, I happened to look under the bed, and there I see a bouncin’ big rattlesnake, stickin’ his head up through a big crack, and as the child draws his hands back, the snake sticks his head up agin’. I sings out, with a loud voice, and says I, ‘master, there’s a rattlesnake under the bed.’ ‘You lie,’ says he; and says I, ‘why master, only jist look for yourself,’ and, at that, mistress runs to the bed, and snatches up the baby, and it screamed and cried, and there was no way of pacifyin’ on it in the world. Well, master begins to think I speaks the truth, and we out with the bed, and up with a board, and there lay five bouncin’ rattlesnakes, and one on ’em had twenty-three rattles on him; and so we killed all on ’em. Now that rattlesnake had charmed that child, and for days and days that child would cry till you put it down on the floor, and then ‘twould crawl under the bed to that place, and then ‘twould be still agin’; and it did seem as though it would never forget that spot, nor snake, and it didn’t till we got into the new house.
“Well, this winter we went to scorein’ and hewin’ timber for the new house, and I followed three scores with a broad-axe, and the timber had to be hewed tu; and I was so tired many a time, that I wished him and his broad-axe 5000 miles beyond time. Well, I was a hewin’ one of the plates, and as ’twas very long, I got one on ’em a leetle windin’ and master see it, and he comes along and hits me a lick with the sharp edge of a square right atwixt my eyes, and cut a considerable piece of a skin so it lopped down on my nose, and on a hewin’ I had to go when the blood was a runnin’ down my face in streams; and, finally, one of the men took a winter-green leaf, and stuck it on over the wound, and it stopped bleedin’ and it healed up in a few days. This warn’t much, but I tell it to show the natur’ of the man; for any body will abuse power, if they have it to do just as they please.
“Young Tom Ludlow, one of the scorers, comes up to me, arter master was gone, and says he, ‘Peter, why in the name of God don’t you show Morehouse the bottoms of your feet? I’d be hung afore I’d stand it.’ ‘Well, Tom,’ says I, ‘I wants to wait till I knows a little more of the world, and then I’ll show him the bottoms of my feet with a greasein’. Well, Tom laughed a good deal, and says he, ‘that’s right Pete.’