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

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A. “Why, you had as good times as you could ask for, it seems to me.”

P. “Oh! yis, Sir, I see many bright days, and, when I was a boy, I guess no feller had more fun than I did. And I mean, Domine, all through the book, to tell things jist as they was, and when I was frolicsome and happy I’ll say so, and when I was in distress, I’ll say so; for it seems to me, a book ought to tell things jist as they be. Well, I had got about to the end of my happy fun, for mistress, who was the best friend I had, was took sick, and I expected her to die—and sure ’nough she did die; and as I was kind ‘a superstitious, one night afore she died, I heard some strange noises, that scart me, and made me think ’em forerunners of mistress’ death; and for years and years them noises used to trouble me distressedly. Well, mistress had been a good woman, and died like a christian. When she thought she was a dyin’, she called up her husband to her bed-side, and took him by the hand, and says, ‘I am now goin’ to my God, and your God, and I want you to prepare to follow me to heaven,’ and says ‘farewell;’ she puts her arms round his neck and kisses him. Then she calls up her children, and says pretty much the same thing to them; and then me, and she puts her arms round all our necks, and kisses us all, and says ‘good bye dear children,’ and she fell back into the bed and died, without a struggle or a groan.