bought a pair of green spectacles. This was in the
evening.

We sat up all night discussing the plan, and
making preparations. Just before the time arrived,
in the morning, for us to leave, I cut off my wife's
hair square at the back of the head, and got her to
dress in the disguise and stand out on the floor.
I found that she made a most respectable looking
gentleman.

My wife had no ambition whatever to assume
this disguise, and would not have done so had it
been possible to have obtained our liberty by more
simple means; but we knew it was not customary
in the South for ladies to travel with male servants;
and therefore, notwithstanding my wife's fair com-
plexion, it would have been a very difficult task for
her to have come off as a free white lady, with me as
her slave; in fact, her not being able to write
would have made this quite impossible. We knew
that no public conveyance would take us, or any
other slave, as a passenger, without our master's
consent. This consent could never be obtained to
pass into a free State. My wife's being muffled in
the poultices, &c., furnished a plausible excuse for
avoiding general conversation, of which most
Yankee travellers are passionately fond.

There are a large number of free negroes residing