escape. Happily the military publican soon afterwards failed in
business, and William found a better master and a more congenial
employment with Captain Cilvers, on board a steam-boat plying between
St. Louis and Galena. At the close of the sailing season he was levied
to an hotel-keeper, a native of a free state, but withal of a class
which exist north as well as south--a most inveterate negro hater. At
this period of William's history, a circumstance occurred, which,
although a common incident in the lives of slaves, is one of the keenest
trials they have to endure--the breaking up of his family circle. Her
master wanted money, and he therefore sold Elizabeth and six of her
children to seven different purchasers. The family relationship is
almost the only solace of slavery. While the mother, brothers, and
sisters are permitted to meet together in the negro hut after the hour
of labour, the slaves are comparatively content with their oppressed
condition; but deprive them of this, the only privilege which they as
human beings are possessed of, and nothing is left but the animal part
of their nature--the living soul is extinguished within them. With them
there is nothing to love--everything to hate. They feel themselves
degraded to the condition not only of mere animals, but of the most
ill-used animals in the creation.

Not needing the services of his young relative, Dr. Young hired him to
the proprietor of the _St. Louis Times_, the best master William ever
had in slavery. Here he gained the scanty amount of education he
acquired at the South. This kind treatment by his editorial master
appears to have engendered in the heart of William a consciousness of
his own manhood, and led him into the commission of an offence similar
to that perpetrated by Frederick Douglass, under similar
circumstances--the assertion of the right of self-defence. He gallantly
defended himself against the attacks of several boys older and bigger