“Hush, honey, what foah you complain? dis am gwine ober Jordan to de lan’ ob res’.”
“Yes, an’ Jordan am a hard road to trabel, shu——” but the sentence was abruptly broken by the clear enunciation of “Thee will tarry here for the Sabbath.”
The words proceeded from beneath a broad-brimmed hat which emerged from among some shrubbery, and the party were quickly conducted into a spacious Quaker kitchen where a bountiful repast was in waiting for them, after partaking of which they were consigned to safe quarters for the day.
From this hospitable retreat, they sallied forth on Monday evening for another night journey, only to find in its ending a duplicate of the preceding one; and in this way the whole distance from Baltimore to Philadelphia was made on foot.
Once in the Quaker city, they were quietly put on a fishing smack and conveyed to Bordentown. At the latter place, under the management of a shrewd Quaker, a personal friend of the railroad agent, the boys were hid away among boxes and bales of goods in a freight car and were soon on their way to Gotham. Meanwhile the girls were dressed for the occasion, and at evening, closely veiled, just as the train was starting, were escorted into a coach by a gentleman assuming the full Southern air, and who had no hesitancy in pushing aside a watcher for runaways stationed at the door. At New York they again rejoined the “way freight,” and the whole party were at once sent on to Albany, where they arrived after a journey of twenty days instead of two as supposed in Washington.
Apropos of the lamentable exhibitions of mob-violence, court-house burning, Sabbath desecration and election frauds presented by Cincinnati in the past few years, it may not be amiss to give a little exhibition of the spirit there manifested by the men of a past generation and see whence some of her present unenviable reputation comes. The city was well known to be intensely pro-slavery and to her came many a haughty Southron for purposes of business or pleasure, bringing with him more or less of his chattels as attendants. Among the comers of the summer of 1843, was a man named Scanlan, visiting his brother-in-law, one Hawkins. He brought with his family a pretty slave girl named Lavinia, some ten years old.