Читать книгу Chains and Freedom: or, The Life and Adventures of Peter Wheeler, a Colored Man Yet Living онлайн

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“Well, we got there, and this was Saturday, and we stayed till the next arternoon. Sunday mornin’ I see a man go by, towards our house, with an axe on his shoulder; and we started in the arternoon, and when we’d got into the middle of the swamp there lay that man dead, with two big wild cats by him that he’d killed: he’d split one on ’em open in the head, and the axe lay buried in the neck of t’other; and there they all lay dead together, all covered with blood, and sich a pitiful sight I hain’t seen. But oh! how thick the wild cats was in that swamp, and you could hear ’em squall in the night, as thick as frogs in the spring; but ginerally they kept pretty still in the day time, and so we didn’t think there was any danger till now; and we had to leave the dead man there alone, only the dead wild cats was with him, and make tracks as fast as we cleverly could, for home.”

A. “Did you ever go to meetings?”

P. “Sometimes I used to go to Quaker meetin’s with mistress, and there we’d set and look first at one and then at t’other; and bi’m’by somebody would up and say a word or two, and down he’d set, and then another, and down he’d set. Sometimes they was the stillest, and sometimes the noisiest meetin’s I ever see. One time, I remember, we went to hear a new Quaker preacher, and there was a mighty sight of folks there; and I guess we set still an hour, without hearin’ a word from anybody: and that ’ere feller was a waitin’ for his spirit, I s’pose; and, finally at last, an old woman gits up and squarks through her nose, and says she, “Oh! all you young gentlemen beware of them ’ere young ladies—Ahem!—Oh! all you young ladies beware of them ’ere young gentlemen—Ahem—Peneroyal tea is good for a cold!” ☜ and down she sat, and I roared right out, and I never was so tickled in all my life; and the rest on ’em looked as sober as setten’ hens:—but I couldn’t hold in, and I snorted out straight; and so mistress wouldn’t let me go agin. And now you are a Domine, and I wants to ask you if the Lord inspired her to git up, whether or no He didn’t forsake her soon arter she got up?”