P. “Yis, Sir! I was jist like that same Rhoderic; what’de call him? Oh! I was worse, the world was a prison to me, and I wanted to lay my bones down at rest by the dust of Solena. I finally went back to New York, and stayed there for a while, and then up to New Haven, and stayed there two months, in Mr. Johnson’s family; and we used to board college students; and we had oceans of oysters and clams; and New Haven is by all odds the handsomest place I ever see in this country or in Europe; and finally I sailed back to New York, arter try in’ to bury my feelin’s in one way and another. But in all my wanderin’s, I couldn’t forgit Solena. She seemed to cling to me like life, and I’d spend hours and hours in thinkin’ about her, and I never used to think about her without tears.
“Well, I thought I would try to bury my feelin’s and forgit Solena, and so I hires out a year to Mr. Bronson, to drive hack, and arter I’d been with him a few months, I called up to Mr. Macy’s, my Quaker friend, and I felt kind’a bad to go there tu and not find Susan, for I had the biggest curiosity in the world to find out where she’d departed tu; but I thought I’d go and talk with the old folks, and see if they’d heard any thing about Susan.
“Well, I slicks up and goes, and pulls the bell, and who should open the door but Susan herself. ☜
“I says, ‘my soul, Susan, how on ‘arth are you here? I thought you was dead.’ And she says as she burst into tears, ‘I have been all but dead. Come in and set down, and I’ll tell you all about it.’
“I says, ‘my heavens! Susan where have you been and how have ye fared?’
“She says, ‘I’ve been in slavery, ☜ and fared hard enough;’ and then she had to go to the door, for the bell rung; and agin pretty soon she comes back and begins her story, and as ’tain’t very long, and pretty good, I’ll tell it, and if you’re a mind to put it in the book you may, for I guess many a feller will be glad to read it.
“‘Well,’ begins Susan, ‘I went down to the vessel, to carry a bundle, and three ruffins seized hold on me, and I hollered and screamed with all my might, and one on ’em clapped his hand on my face, and another held me down, and took out a knife and swore if I didn’t stop my noise he’d stick it through my heart; and they dragged me down into the hold, where there was seven others that had been stole in the same way; and these two fellers chained me up, and I cried and sobbed till I was so fain’t I couldn’t set up. Along in the course of the forenoon they fetched me some coarse food, but I had no appetite, and I wished myself dead a good many times, for I couldn’t git news to master. I continued in that state for two or three days, and found no relief but by submitting to my fate, and I was doleful enough off, for I couldn’t see sun, moon, or stars, for I should think two weeks; and then a couple of these ruffins come and took me out into the forecastle, and my companions, and they told me all about how they’d been stole; and we was as miserable a company as ever got together. Come on deck, I see five gentlemen, ☜ and one on ’em axed me if I could cook and wait on gentlemen and ladies, and I says ‘yis, Sir,’ with my eyes full of tears, and my heart broke with sorrow; and he axed me how old I was? I says, ‘seventeen,’ and he turns round to the master of the vessel and says, ‘I’ll take this girl.’ And he paid four hundred and fifty dollars for me, and he took me to his house; and I found out his name was Woodford, and he told me I was in Charleston; but I couldn’t forgit the happy streets of New York. Now I gin lip all expectation of ever seem’ my own land agin’, and I submitted to my fate as well as I could, but ’twas a dreadful heart-breakin’ scene. Master was dreadful savage, and his wife was a despod cross ugly woman. When he goes into the house he says to his wife, ‘now I’ve got you a good gal, put that wench on the plantation.’ And he pointed to a gal that had been a chambermaid; and then turnin’ to me says, ‘and you look out or you’ll git there, and if you do you’ll know it.’
“I’d been there four or five weeks, and I heard master makin’ a despod cussin’ and swearin’ in the evenin’, and I heard him over-say, ‘I’ll settle with the black cuss to-morrow; I’ll have his hide tanned.’
“So the next day, arter breakfast, mistress orders me down into the back yard, and I found two hundred slaves there; and there was an old man there with a gray head, stripped and drawed over a whipping-block his hands tied down, and the big tears a rollin’ down his face; and he looked exactly like some old gray headed, sun-burnt revolutioner; and a white man stood over him with a cat-o’-nine-tails in his hand, and he was to give him one hundred lashes. ☜ And he says, ‘now look on all on ye, and if you git into a scrape you’ll have this cat-o’-nine-tails wrapped round you;’ and then he begun to whip, and he hadn’t struck mor’n two or three blows, afore I see the blood run, and he was stark naked, and his back and body was all over covered with scars, and he says in kind’a broken language, ‘Oh! massa don’t kill me.’ ‘Tan his hide,’ says master, and he kept on whippin’, and the old man groaned like as if he was a dyin’, and he got the hundred lashes, ☜ and then was untied and told to go about his work; and I looked at the block, and it was kivered with blood, and that same block didn’t git clear from blood as long as I stayed there. ☜
“‘Well, this spectacle affected me so, I could scarcely git about the house, for I expected next would be my turn; and I was so afraid I shouldn’t do right I didn’t half do my work.