“‘And be dam quick about it too.’
“Arter I gits ’em off, he crosses my hands, and ties ’em together with one end of a rope, and throws the other end up overhead, across a beam, and then draws me up by my hands till I clears the floor two feet. He then crosses my feet jist so, and puts the rope through the bull-ring in the floor, and then pulls on the rope till I was drawn tight—till my bones fairly snapped, and ties it, and then leaves me in that doleful situation, and goes off to the house, and wanders round ’bout twenty minutes; and there the north wind sweeps through: oh! how it stung; and there I hung and cried, and the tears fell and froze on my breast, and I wished I was dead. But back he comes, and says he, as he takes up a withe, ‘now, you dam nigger, I’m a goin’ to settle with you for breaking open the cupboard,’ and he hits me four or five cuts with one and it broke; and he catches up another, and he cut all ways, cross and back, and one way and then another, and he whipped me till the blood run down my legs, and froze in long blood isicles on the balls of my heels, as big as your thumb!! ☜ !! and I hollered and screamed till I was past hollerin’ and twitchin’, for when he begun, I hollered and twitched dreadfully; and my hands was swelled till the blood settled under my nails and toes, and one of my feet hain’t seen a well day since: and I cried, and the tears froze on my cheeks, and I had got almost blind, and so stiff I couldn’t stir, and near dyin’. How long he whipped me I can’t tell, for I got so, finally, I couldn’t tell when he was a whippin’ on me!!! ‘Oh! Mr. L.——,’ “said Peter, as the tears rolled down his wrinkled cheeks, while the picture of that scene of blood again came up vividly before his mind, “‘oh! Mr. L.——, it was a sight to make any body that has got any feelin’ weep; and there I hung, and he goes off to the house, and arter a while, I can’t tell how long, he comes back with a tin cup full of brine, heat up, and says he, ‘now nigger, I’m goin’ to put this on to keep you from mortifyin,’ and when it struck me, it brought me to my feelin’, I tell ye; and then, arter a while, he lets me down and unties me, and goes off to the house.
“Well, I couldn’t stand up, and there the barn doors was open yit, and I was so stiff and lame, and froze, it seemed to me I couldn’t move at all. But I sat down, and begins to rub my hands to get ’em to their feelin’, so I could use ’em, and then my legs, and then my other parts, and my back I couldn’t move, for ’twas as stiff as a board, and I couldn’t turn without turnin’ my whole body; and I should think I was in that situation all of an hour, afore I could git my clothes on.
“At last I got my shirt on, and it stuck fast to my back, and then my t’other clothes on, and then I gits up and shuts the barn doors, and waddles off to the house; and he sees me a comin’, and hollers out ‘nigger, go and do your chores, and off to the woods.’
“Well, I waddled round, and did my chores as well as I could, and then takes my axe and waddles off to the woods, through a deep snow. I gits there, and cuts down a large rock oak tree, and a good while I was ’bout it, tu, and my shirt still stuck fast to my back. I off with one eight foot cut, and then flung my axe down on the ground, and swore I’d die afore I cut another chip out of that log that day; and I gets down and clears away the snow on the sunny side of the log, and sets down on the leaves, and a part of the time I sighed, and a part of the time I cried, and a part of the time I swore, and wished myself dead fifty times.
“Well, settin’ there I looked up and to my surprise I see a woman comin’ towards me; and come to, it turned out to be my old friend ‘Lecta, and the first thing she says, when she comes up was, ‘ain’t you most dead, Peter?’ ‘Yis, and I wish I was quite, Miss ‘Lecta;’ and she cries and I cries, and she sets down on the log and says, ‘Peter, ain’t you hungry? here’s some victuals for you;’ and she had some warm coffee in a coffee-pot, and some fried meat, and some bread, and pie, and cheese, and nut-cakes; and says she to me, ‘Peter, eat it all up if you can.’
A. “Why! Peter what would become of the world, if it warn’t, for the women?”
P. “Why, Sir, they’d eat each other up, and what they didn’t eat, they’d kill. Then they keep the men back from doin’ a great many ferocious things. Why, only ‘tother day when that duel was fit in Washington, between Graves and Cilley, the papers say that Mrs. Graves, when she found out that the duel was a comin’ on, tried to stop her husband, but he wouldn’t hear to her, and so he went on, and killed poor Cilley, and made his wife a widder, and his children orphans. Now, only think how much misery would have been spared, if he’d only heard to his wife.
“‘Well,’ says ‘Lecta, ‘I wouldn’t strike another stroke to day.’ And then to be undiscovered, she goes up to a neighbor’s and stays there all day. So at night I goes home, and does my chores the best way I could. So I carries in a handful of wood, and master says, ‘how much wood you cut, nigger?’ ‘I don’t know, Sir.’ ‘One load?’ ‘I don’t know, Sir.’ ‘How many trees you cut down!’ ‘One, Sir.’ ‘You cut it up?’ ‘No, Sir.’ ‘Well, tell me how much you have cut, dam quick, tu.’ ‘One log off, Sir.’ At that he catches up his cane, and throws on his great coat, and fetches a heavy oath, and starts off for the woods. I sets down in the corner, with a dreadful ticklin’ round my heart; and the children kept a lookin’ out of the winder, to see him comin’, and in he comes, frothy, he was so mad. Mistress says to him, ‘possup,’ which means, ‘stop,’ I ‘spose, and then he went into the other room to supper.
Finally, I crawls into my nest of rags, and I laid on my face all night, I couldn’t lay any other way; and next mornin’ after tryin’ several times, I made out to git up and go down, and do my chores.