Page:Fifty Years in Chains, or the Life of an American Slave.djvu/391

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The Life of an American Slave
389

myself, but afterwards to work in the neighborhood for wages. For eight years, I lived in this region of country and experienced a variety of fortune. At last I had saved near $400, and bought near Baltimore twelve acres of land, a yoke of oxen, and two cows, and attended the Baltimore market. I had the great misfortune to lose my wife. I married in two years, and of my second wife had four children. Ten years of happiness and comparative ease I enjoyed on my little farm, and I had settled down into contentment, little fearing any more trouble. But a sad fate was before me.