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

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“Well, next day we went to fixin’ two kivered wagons for the journey; and, arter we’d got all fixed to start, he sends me over to his mother’s to shell some seed corn, upstairs, in a tub. Well, I hadn’t slept ’nough long back, and so, in spite of my teeth, I got to sleep in the tub. He comes over there, and finds me asleep in the tub, and he takes up a flail staff and hits me over the head, and cussed and swore, and telled his mother to see I didn’t git to sleep, nor have anything to eat in all day. Well, arter he’d gone, the old lady called me down, and gin me a good fat meal, and telled me to go up and shell corn as fast as I could. Well, I did, and it come night—I got a good supper, and put out for home; and I’ve always found the women cleverer than the men—they’re kind’a tender-hearted, ye know.

“Well, we got ready, and off we started, and I guess ’twas the 9th of May; and I drove a team of four horses, and it had the chist of tools and family; and he drove another team, full of other things, and his brother-in-law, Mr. Abers, who was agoin’ out to larn the trade; and Abers was mighty good to me.