The White Slave, or Memoirs of a Fugitive/Chapter 44
In leaving Mr Mason's hospitable mansion, where I had protracted my stay beyond all reason, I felt like parting with an old friend. As he pressed my hand and said farewell, he bade me remember that much had passed between us in confidence; and that any hint, dropped incautiously, as to his opinions and intentions, might affect him most injuriously, endangering his peaceful residence in the country, and it might be his life.
Returning to the stage tavern, whence I had made this agreeable side visit, I prepared to pursue my southern journey. I resolved, however, while forwarding my baggage to Charleston by the stage coach, to proceed myself leisurely on horseback; for I had some curiosity to strike upon, if I could, and to retrace the road which I had followed in my escape from slavery. It being made known that I wished to purchase a horse, I soon found myself beset by a dozen jockeys or more, who did their best to impose upon me, one after the other, animals lame, halt, blind, and broken-winded. But I succeeded, by the aid and assistance of my friend, the Yankee stage driver, — whom I found very knowing ‘on the subject of horse flesh, and who, to explain the fact that so many broken-down animals were offered, observed to me aside, and with a knowing wink, that these southern folks treated their horses almost as bad as they did their niggers, — in mounting myself to my satisfaction; and with a few shirts and other necessaries stuffed into my saddle-bags, I started afresh on my journey.
A few days' travelling, without the occurrence of any thing remarkable, brought me into the vicinity of Camden; and as I carefully scrutinized the road, I did not fail presently to recognize that very same little hedge tavern where Thomas and myself had been taken as prisoners, and whence, by the aid of the blue-eyed little girl, we had effected our escape, carrying with us the spoils of Egypt, in the shape of the clothes and money of our captors. With minds excited as mine had been by the incidents of that eventful escape, the whole scene, with all its surroundings, stamps itself wonderfully on the memory. I could recall exactly the general appearance of the ° road, as we had been dragged along, fastened to the saddles of our captors, and of the little hedge tavern, as it had first appeared in sight; and no sooner did I again see it, than I recognized it at once for the very same. Indeed, there was the less difficulty in doing that, since, in the whole of my horseback journey, I had not found a single house which had any appearance of newness about it; nor were houses of such frequent occurrence as to tend much to confuse one's recollection. Twenty years had made very little change in that part of the country. As the house still had the external appearance of a tavern, or at least of a whiskey shop, I determined to stop a while to reconnoitre.
A stout and rather good-looking boy of twelve or fourteen, without hat or shoes, and with no other clothes than a shirt, not lately washed, and the tattered fragments of a pair of pantaloons, so much too large for him as probably to have been his father's, took my horse as I dismounted at the door, and promised to provide him with water and corn, Walking into the single room which served for kitchen, bar room, dining and sleeping room for the family, the only other room in the house being reserved for guests, I observed an old crone of a woman sitting by the window, zealously plying a loom in which she was weaving a piece of coarse homespun. Two small children, who were rolling and tumbling on the floor, spoke to her as "granny." She might doubtless have once been the mistress of the family, but seemed now to have resigned the more immediate charge of matters to a younger woman, probably a daughter of hers, as the children, while calling the old woman "granny," called the younger one "mammy." This younger woman stood at a table, mixing corn cakes in a great wooden tray. She was very poorly dressed, and without shoes or stockings; but with an expression of good nature on her face, and an expressive, soft blue eye, which marked her, however rude and poverty stricken, as one of those tender-hearted females who can never look upon distress without doing what they can to remove it. Enter _ ing into conversation with the women about the weather, crops, distance to Camden, whether they could give me any thing for dinner, and so forth, I presently inquired, as if incidentally, whether they had long lived at this place. "O, law, yes," said the old woman at the loom. "Why, my Susy, there, who, you see, has already a family growing up about her — she was born in this house, and three or four more children, too, older than she, and as many more younger; but they are all gone now, except only her that stays by her old mother."
"Not dead, I hope?" I asked, in a sympathizing tone.
"O, no! not dead," said the old woman, "but as good as dead to me; all gone, all moved off, some to Florida, and some to Alabama, and some to Texas, and that's the last I shall ever hear of them;" and here followed a deep sigh.
"But don't. you sometimes get a letter?" I inquired.
"Get a letter!" said the old woman, with a toss of the head, such as left little doubt in my mind that she had been a smart piece in her day, very different from her good-natured daughter — "get a letter! And which of my sons and daughters, do you suppose, knows how to write, or to read either, for that matter? Poor people here in Carolina don't have any chance at learning; no schools, and nothing to pay the teacher with, if we had any. That's what has made them all move off to seek a living elsewhere. Susy, here, knows how to read; I reckon you must have heard of it somewhere; but how do you suppose it happened? When she was a young girl, there was a Yankee pedler stopped once at our house, one of those fellows as goes travelling with a horse and wagon, selling wooden clocks, — and there's one of them now," (here she pointed to the corner where 'the machine hung,) "only it hasn't gone any this ten years, — and pins and needles, and tin ware, and they do say, wooden nutmegs, though I don't know as this one that I am speaking of ever sold any. Awful cheats, though, some of those Yankee pedlers are — awful!" said the old lady, dropping her shuttle, and holding up both hands, and looking at me with a very woe-begone expression. "That's one reason our folks are all so poor, and that even those who own slaves have to keep moving off to Alabama, because these cheating Yankee pedlers carry off all the money out of the country; at least, that's what I heard colonel Thomas, the member of congress, say, the last time he was round this way electioneering. Howsomever, I don't know any harm of this particular Yankee that I was speaking of. He used to come round about once a year; and he sold his things a good deal cheaper, and I can't say but that they were just as good, as you can buy in Camden town. Well, one time this pedler came to our house, sick with a mighty smart fever. I thought he would die, sure enough; and I rather reckon he would, if Susy, there, though she was then only twelve or fourteen years old, had not looked after him just as if he had been her own father. And so, you see, when he began to get well, as it was a good while before he was able to travel again, he took to teaching the child to read, as he said, out of gratitude. He put her on the track, and gave her a spelling book out of those he carried round to sell, and a nice, new Bible, — get it, Susy, and show it to the stranger, — which he said his mother gave him just before he set out from Connecticut; and so, you see, whenever any pedler, or Methodist minister, or other person of learning that wasn't too proud, came along, Susy would get a lesson from them, till she learnt to read as glib as could be; and now she teaches her children too. You wouldn't believe it, but that boy Jim, there," pointing to the boy who had taken my horse, "knows how to read! All his mother's doings; and if he can only now and then get hold of a newspaper, he is as proud as a peacock."
All this long history of her daughter, on the part of the old lady, served to confirm me in the conjecture I had formed that the barefooted matron before me, distinguished by such remarkable literary accomplishments and motherly tenderness, and to the first-rate excellency of whose corn cakes I was myself shortly after able to testify, must be the identical little girl to whom Thomas and myself had owed our escape on that night, so memorable to me, on which I had started on my northern travels in pursuit of freedom.
To make matters sure, while she was setting a table for my dinner in the other room, I inquired of: her if she could recollect how, a great many years ago, — it must have been before the time that the pedler taught her to read, — two men, one black, the other white, had been brought prisoners to her mother's house, and confined for the night in this very room. As I went into the matter somewhat in detail, I could easily perceive, as the circumstances were recalled to her memory, though she said nothing, a gleam of wondering recognition lighting up a face, which, though it could not be called handsome, more especially as the uncombed hair hanging about her head gave her a sort of wild appearance, had yet upon it an unmistakable stamp of good heartedness, which did not fail to make a very agreeable impression. But when, in the course of the story, I came to speak of the little girl who stole in at night, and, while their keepers slept, cut the bonds of the prisoners, alarm and anxiety spread over her before smiling features; and though she strove hard to preserve an unconscious self-composure, it was easy to perceive that she experienced no little terror, as if she were now in danger of being called to account for that act of childish generosity. However, I very soon quieted her fears on that score. Great, indeed, was her astonishment, when I informed her, that I was the selfsame white prisoner whom she had released, and what was more, that I was both ready and able to make some return to her for the favor she had then done me.
Upon taking the liberty after this introduction, and the assurance that I wished to befriend her, to inquire a little into her domestic affairs, I learnt, chiefly indeed from this old woman, who insisted upon doing pretty much all the talking, that her husband, though a good sort of a man enough, was shiftless and idle, and that the support of the family devolved pretty much on the women. The husband, indeed, wanted to emigrate, but the old woman, with a degree of home feeling not very usual, so far as I have noticed, with that class of the American people, was unwilling to go, and the daughter would not without the mother. It seemed to be the great object of the daughter's ambition to send her eldest boy, Tom, to school. She had already taught him all she knew, and he was presently called in to give a specimen of his accomplishments by reading a chapter from the pedler's Bible, which the good mother produced from a closet, and which, carefully covered with cloth, was evidently preserved with great care.
There was, it seemed, in that neighborhood, what was called a manual labor boarding school, lately set up by the Methodists, of which religious sect the boy's _ mother was a zealous member. This school was principally designed for the instruction of those of limited means, who, by laboring a certain number of hours in the day, might acquire, along with their learning, some mechanical trade, and at the same time diminish the cost of their board and instruction. This cost, even without such reduction, did not much exceed the moderate sum of a hundred dollars a year. But though, by great economy, my benefactress had already laid aside, as she told me, about thirty-seven dollars, where the rest of the hundred was to come from — and she wanted the boy to have at least a year's schooling — she did not know; and besides, it would take about the whole of her present savings to fit him out with clothes, books, and other necessaries.
I bade the good woman make herself easy on that score, and the boy having washed and dressed himself, and caught a scrubby pony belonging to the family, we set out together that same afternoon to visit the school, which was at no great distance.
The founder and chief teacher of it, lately a trayelling minister of the Methodist connection, but who had now devoted himself entirely to this new work, was, I found, originally from the north. He had been bred a shoemaker, but feeling a call to preach, had quitted his original vocation, and after many wanderings had finally reached South Carolina, of which circuit he had become one of the preachers. In point of education and manners, the contrast was very marked indeed between this good man (for such I soon satisfied myself he was) and my late clerical acquaintance, Mr Telfair; but in zeal, enthusiasm, and the desire of benefiting those about them, both physically and spiritually, there were strong points of resemblance between them. On the whole, I was well satisfied that my young protégé should be trusted in such good hands. I paid down for him his board and tuition for a, year, and in case it should be thought best for him to remain a second year, I left with the teacher an order on the merchant in Charleston, on whom I had letters of credit. I also desired to be informed by letter, through the same source, of the boy's progress and promise, with a view, if he proved deserving, of doing something more for him. Having sent him home with money enough to fit him out, without intrenching on his mother's little store, I turned my horse's head towards Charleston, resolved to take my route as nearly as I could in the general direction of my former travels in that region,
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