pleasures, and just foolish enough to keep feeding and feeding
ourselves up with the idea that we should get what had been thus
fairly promised; and when we think it is almost in our hands, find
ourselves flatly denied! Just think! how could we bear it? Why,
there was Charles Brodhead promised his slave Ned, that when
harvesting was over, he might go and see his wife, who lived
some twenty or thirty miles off. So Ned worked early and late,
and as soon as the harvest was all in, he claimed the promised
boon. His master said, he had merely told him he 'would see if
he could go, when the harvest was over; but now he saw that
he could not go.' But Ned, who still claimed a positive promise,
on which he had fully depended, went on cleaning his shoes. His
master asked him if he intended going, and on his replying 'yes,'
took up a sled-stick that lay near him, and gave him such a blow
on the head as broke his skull, killing him dead on the spot. The
poor colored people all felt struck down by the blow.' Ah! and
well they might. Yet it was but one of a long series of bloody,
and other most effectual blows, struck against their liberty and
their lives. * But to return from our digression.

The subject of this narrative was to have been free July 4,
1827, but she continued with her master till the wool was spun,
and the heaviest of the 'fall's work' closed up, when she concluded
to take her freedom into her own hands, and seek her
fortune in some other place.


Note:
*Yet no official notice was taken of his more than brutal murder.