suffered so much for me, would be proving recreant to the duty which I
owed to her. Besides this, I had three brothers and a sister there,--two
of my brothers having died.

My mother, my brothers Joseph and Millford, and my sister Elizabeth,
belonged to Mr. Isaac Mansfield, formerly from one of the Free States,
(Massachusetts, I believe.) He was a tinner by trade, and carried on a
large manufacturing establishment. Of all my relatives, mother was
first, and sister next. One evening, while visiting them, I made some
allusion to a proposed journey to Canada, and sister took her seat by
my side, and taking my hand in hers, said, with tears in her eyes,--

"Brother, you are not going to leave mother and your dear sister here
without a friend, are you?"

I looked into her face, as the tears coursed swiftly down her cheeks,
and bursting into tears myself, said--

"No, I will never desert you and mother."

She clasped my hand in hers, and said--

"Brother, you have often declared that you would not end your days in
slavery. I see no possible way in which you can escape with us; and now,
brother, you are on a steamboat where there is some chance for you to
escape to a land of liberty. I beseech you not to let us hinder you. If
we cannot get our liberty, we do not wish to be the means of keeping you
from a land of freedom."

I could restrain my feelings no longer, and an outburst of my own