commonly shunned, and all kinds of luxuries I was perfectly a stranger
to; and during the time I was employed in cutting the aforementioned
quantity of wood, I never was at the expense of six-pence worth of
spirits. Being after this labor forty years of age, I worked at
various places, and in particular on Ram-Island, which I purchased
Solomon and Cuff, two sons of mine, for two hundred dollars each.

It will here be remembered how much money I earned by cutting wood in
four years. Besides this I had considerable money, amounting in all
to near three hundred pounds. After this I purchased a negro man, for
no other reason than to oblige him, and gave him sixty pounds. But in
a short time after he run away from me, and I thereby lost all that I
gave for him, except twenty pounds which he paid me previous to his
absconding. The rest of my money I laid out in land, in addition to a
farm which I owned before, and a dwelling house thereon. Forty four
years had then completed their revolution since my entrance in to this
existence of servitude and misfortune. Solomon my eldest son, being
then in his seventeenth year, and all my hope and dependence for help,
I hired him out to one Charles Church, of Rhode Island, for one year,
on consideration of his giving him twelve pounds and an opportunity of
acquiring some learning. In the course of the year, Church fitted out
a vessel for a whaling voyage, and being in want of hands to man her,
he induced my son to go, with the promise of giving him, on his
return, a pair of silver buckles, besides his wages. As soon as I
heard of his going to sea, I immediately set out to go and prevent it
if possible. But on my arrival at Church's, to my great grief, I
could only see the vessel my son was on almost out of sight going to
sea. My son died of the scurvy on this voyage, and Church has never
yet paid me the least of his wages. In my son, besides the loss of
his life, I lost equal to seventy-five pounds.