said to her, "Do not be discouraged, for Jesus is your friend; if you
lack for knowledge, he will inform you, and if you meet with troubles
and trials on your way, cast all your cares on Jesus, and don't forget
to pray." The old man spoke these words while praying, shouting, crying,
and saying farewell to my mother. He had, in a manner, raised nearly all
the colored people on the plantation; so he had a fatherly feeling for
all of them. The old man looked down on me, and said, "My child, you are
now without a father and will soon be without a mother; but be a good
boy, and God will be father and mother to you. If you will put your
trust in him and pray to him, he will take you home to heaven when you
die, where you can meet your mother there, where parting will be no
more. Farewell." I was then taken from my mother, and have not seen or
heard of her since--about twenty-nine years ago. Old Uncle Jack, as my
father was called by the plantation people, spoke words of comfort to
all of us before we were parted.

The lot of human chattels, of which I was one, was taken to their new
home on Wilson's plantation, in the same county as the Kirkwood
plantation. Wilson told my sisters and myself that our mother and
ourselves were about six hundred miles apart.

After I had been in my new home about two years, Wilson bought my uncle
Ben from a man named Strucker, who lived in the same neighborhood, but
he did not buy uncle Ben's wife. Two years later Wilson moved to another
plantation he owned in Pontotoc County, Mississippi, about one hundred
miles distant from his Atala County plantation. Ben not being willing to
go so far from his wife, ran away from his master. Wilson, however, left
word that if any one would catch and return Ben to him, he would pay two
hundred dollars. This was a bait not to be resisted. The professional
slave-hunters, with their blood-hounds, were soon on the track. They