they felt safe in spending a few hours with us. It was but six miles to the next station, where they would stay over night, therefore we availed ourselves of the opportunity to get what information we could from our guests.
William was intelligent, and could read and write, had spent many winters in Washington, from whence he would have escaped long ago but for his affection for Margaret and the aforesaid promise of emancipation. He had a calm and dignified manner in speaking on any subject except his own condition, parentage and degradation; on that subject he could not talk without becoming so excited that, notwithstanding his profession of piety, he would swear in a somewhat modified style; then Margaret would chide him in her pleasant way, saying, “Now don’t, Willie, it will only make you feel bad to talk so, and I’d a heap rather be in your place than his. Besides, maybe old massa will repent some time.” Then he would cool down, and undei her eye, talk without excitement a few minutes. Said he: “The man I called master was my half brother. My mother was a better woman than his, and I was the smartest boy of the two, but while he had a right smart chance at school, I was whipped if I asked the name of the letters that spell the name of the God that made us both of one blood. While he was sent to college, I had no teacher but old Pomp, but great pains were taken to teach me that the whole power of the nation was pledged to keep me in slavery. I might protest, threaten, feign sickness or run away, the struggle was against fearful odds, therefore the less we knew the less we would suffer. When we were boys,” said he, “I asked him one day when we were playing together, why I might not learn to read as well as he. ‘Because,’ said he, ‘slaves ought not to know too much, it would make them discontented; they know
