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

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The next night we stayed in Owego; but I’m afore my story, for goin’ down the Blue Mountain next day, the leaders run, and I couldn’t hold ’em if I should be shot, and they broke one arm off of the block tongue. Well, I stopped, and master comes runnin’ up, and he fell on, and struck me, and mauled me most awfully; and jist then a man come up on horseback, and says he to master, ‘If you want to kill that boy, why don’t ye beat his brains out with an axe and done with it—but don’t maul him so; for you know, and I know, for I see it all myself, that that boy ain’t able to hold that team, and I shouldn’t a thought it strange if they had dashed every thing to pieces.’ Well, master was mad ’nough, for that was a dreadful rebuke; and says he, ‘You’d better make off with yourself, and mind your own business.’ The man says, ‘I don’t mean to quarrel with you, and I won’t; but I think ye act more like a devil than a man! ☜ So off he went; and I love that man yit!

Next night we stayed in Owego; and the tavern keeper, a fine man, had a talk with me arter bed-time; and says he, ‘Peter, your master can’t touch a hair of your head, and if you want to be free you can, for we’ve tried that experiment here lately; and we’ve got a good many slaves free in this way, and they’re doing well. But if you want to run away, why run; but wait awhile, for you are a boy yit, and there are folks in York State, mean ’nough to catch you and send you back to your master!’ ☜ ^[3]