a house servant, while his mother was engaged as a field hand. One of
his first bitter experiences of the cruelties of slavery, was his
witnessing the infliction of ten lashes upon the bare back of his
mother, for being a few minutes behind her time at the field--a
punishment inflicted with one of those peculiar whips in the
construction of which, so as to produce the greatest amount of torture,
those whom Lord Carlisle has designated "the chivalry of the South" find
scope for their ingenuity.

Dr. Young subsequently removed to a farm near St. Louis, in the same
State. Having been elected a Member of the Legislature, he devolved the
management of his farm upon an overseer, having, what to his unhappy
victims must have been the ironical name of "Friend Haskall." The mother
and child were now separated. The boy was levied to a Virginian named
Freeland, who bore the military title of Major, and carried on the
plebeian business of a publican. This man was of an extremely brutal
disposition, and treated his slaves with most refined cruelty. His
favourite punishment, which he facetiously called "Virginian play," was
to flog his slaves severely, and then expose their lacerated flesh to
the smoke of tobacco stems, causing the most exquisite agony. William
complained to his owner of the treatment of Freeland, but, as in almost
all similar instances, the appeal was in vain. At length he was induced
to attempt an escape, not from that love of liberty which subsequently
became with him an unconquerable passion, but simply to avoid the
cruelty to which he was habitually subjected. He took refuge in the
woods, but was hunted and "traced" by the blood-hounds of a Major
O'Fallon, another of "the chivalry of the South," whose gallant
occupation was that of keeping an establishment for the hire of
ferocious dogs with which to hunt fugitive slaves. The young slave
received a severe application of "Virginia play" for his attempt to