Page:The life and letters of John Brown (Sanborn).djvu/30

was of some note as a gentleman, but I never knew that he gave evidence of being a Christian. Aug. 11, 1840, my second wife died with consumption, which she had been declining under for a long time. I think she died a Christian. Here my old wounds were broken open anew, and I had great trials.

"Some little time before this there had been great speculation in village lots, and I had suffered my name to be used as security at the banks. My property was in jeopardy; I expected all to be lost. I had some to pity me, but very few to help me; so I learned that outward friendship and property are almost inseparably connected. There were many to inform me that I had brought my troubles upon myself. April, 1841, I was married to the Widow Lucy Hinsdale. My worldly burdens rather increased, but I bore them with much patience. April, 1843: about this time my family had so scattered—some by marriage and other ways—that I thought best to leave my favorite house and farm, and to build new at the centre of Hudson.

. . . I have great reason to mourn my unfaithfulness to my children. I have been much perplexed by the loss of property, and a long tedious lawsuit; while my health has been remarkably good for one of my age, and I have great reason for thanksgiving."

This artless narrative, written by Owen Brown at the age of seventy-eight, discloses his character, and sketches in some manner the conditions of life under which John Brown was born and bred. But another paper from the same hand shows how naturally the son inherited from his Connecticut ancestors his hatred of slavery. Owen Brown thus described, about 1850, some events of which he had been cognizant sixty or seventy years earlier:—

"I am an Abolitionist. I know we are not loved by many; I have no confession to make for being one, yet I wish to tell how long I have been one, and how I became so. I have no hatred to negroes. When a child four or five years old, one of our nearest neighbors had a slave that was brought from Guinea. In the year 1776 my father was called into the army at New York, and left his work undone. In August, our good neighbor Captain John Fast, of West Simsbury, let my mother have the labor of his slave to plough a few days. I used to go out into the field with this slave,—called Sam,—and he used to carry me on his back, and I fell in love with him. He worked but a few days, and went home sick with the pleurisy, and died very suddenly. When told that he would die, he said he should go to Guinea, and wanted victuals put up for the journey. As I recollect, this was the first funeral I ever attended in the days