as I was walking along Main Street, he seized me by the collar, and
struck me over the head five or six times with a large cane, which
caused the blood to gush from my nose and ears in such a manner that my
clothes were completely saturated with blood. After beating me to his
satisfaction, he let me go, and I returned to the office so weak from
the loss of blood, that Mr. Lovejoy sent me home to my master. It was
five weeks before I was able to walk again. During this time, it was
necessary to have some one to supply my place at the office, and I lost
the situation.

After my recovery, I was hired to Capt. Otis Reynolds, as a waiter on
board the steamboat Enterprize, owned by Messrs. John and Edward Walsh,
commission merchants at St. Louis. This boat was then running on the
upper Mississippi. My employment on board was to wait on gentlemen, and
the captain being a good man, the situation was a pleasant one to
me;--but in passing from place to place, and seeing new faces every day,
and knowing that they could go where they pleased, I soon became
unhappy, and several times thought of leaving the boat at some landing
place, and trying to make my escape to Canada, which I had heard much
about as a place where the slave might live, be free, and be protected.

But whenever such thoughts would come into my mind, my resolution would
soon be shaken by the remembrance that my dear mother was a slave in St.
Louis, and I could not bear the idea of leaving her in that condition.
She had often taken me upon her knee, and told me how she had carried me
upon her back to the field when I was an infant--how often she had been
whipped for leaving her work to nurse me--and how happy I would appear
when she would take me into her arms. When these thoughts came over me,
I would resolve never to leave the land of slavery without my mother. I
thought that to leave her in slavery, after she had undergone and