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

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“Well, I parted from that man, and I resolved that I would run away, but take his advice, and not run till I could clear the coop for good. Well, we finally got to the end of our journey, and put up at Henry Ludlow’s house, in Milton township, and county of Cayuga, and State of New York.”

A. “Well, Peter, I think we can afford to stop writing now, for I’m fairly tired out. Good bye, Peter.”

P. “Good bye, Domine.”

As I came away from the lowly cottage of Peter Wheeler, and thought of the toils and barbarities of a life of slavery, and returned to the sweet and endearing charities of my own quiet home, tenderness subdued my spirit; and I could not but repeat, with emotions of the deepest gratitude, those sweet lines of my childhood:

‘I was not born a little slave,

To labor in the sun;

And wish I were but in my grave,

And all my labor done.’

Oh! I exclaimed as I entered my study, and sat down before a bright, cheerful fireside, and was greeted with the kind look of an affectionate wife, as the storm howled over the mountains, Oh! God made man to be free, and he must be a wretch, and not a man, who can quench all this social light forever. I hate not slavery so much for its fetters, and whips, and starvation, as for the blight and mildew it casts upon the social and moral condition of man. Oh! enslave not a soul—a deathless spirit—trample not upon a mind, ’tis an immortal thing. Man perchance may light anew the torch he quenches, but the soul! Oh! tremble and beware—lay not rude hands upon God’s image there—I thought of the vast territory that stretches from the Atlantic to the foot of the Rocky Mountains, and from our Southern border to the heart of our Capitol, as one mighty altar of Mammon—where so much social light is sacrificed and blotted from the universe; where so many deathless spirits, that God made free as the mountain wild bird, are chained down forever, and I kneeled around my family altar, and I could not help uttering a prayer from the depths of my soul, for the millions of God’s creatures, and my brethren, who pass lives of loneliness and sorrow in a world which has been lighted up with the Redeemer’s salvation. What a scene for man to look at when he prays: A God who loves to make all his creatures happy! A world which groans because man is a sinner! A man who loves to make his brother wretched! Oh! thought I, if prayer can reach a father’s ear to-night, one yoke shall be broken, and one oppressed slave shall go free.