“Well, I goes and does what he says; and he goes up to Mr. Ludlow’s, and _gits my part of the bounty money, and pockets it up; and that’s all I got for dousin’ his glims_! ☜
“While he was gone, Lecta, my friend, comes, and says, ‘Peter, where’s father gone?’
“‘To git more pain’ter money,’ says I, ‘that I arns for him nights.’
“‘I think dad’s got money ’nough,’ says she, ‘without stealin’ your’n, that you arn nights off on that Oneida Lake.’
“I says, with tears in my eyes, ‘I know it’s hard, Lecta; but as long as master lives, I shan’t git anything but a striped back; and what I arns nights, he puts in his own pockets.’
“‘I know it’s hard, Peter,’ says Lecta; ‘but there’s an end comin’ to all this; and dad won’t live _always, perhaps_.’ And I’d often heard her say, arter master had been abusin’ on me, ‘I declare, I shouldn’t be a bit astonished at all, to see the devil come, and take dad off, bodily—_so there_.’
“Well, while I stood there a cryin’, out comes Julia, and asks me what I was a cryin’ at? ‘What’s the matter?’ says she.
“‘Matter ’nough,’ says I, ‘for master takes all I can arn days and nights, tu.’
“‘What?’ says Julia, ‘dad han’t gone up to Ludlow’s arter your pain’ter money?’
“‘Well,’ says she, ‘it’s no mor’n you can expect from a dumb old hog.’ ☜
Now, that speech come from a _darter_, and a pretty smart darter tu, and it was jist coarse ’nough language to use ’bout master, tu; but Miss Julia never was in the habit of makin’ coarse speeches. ‘But never mind, Peter,’ says she, ‘’twill be time to take wheat down to Albany, pretty soon, and then you’ll git pay for your pain’ter.’
“‘Yis,’ says I, ‘and I’ll git pay for a good many other things, tu.’
☞ “Now, Mr. L——, I wants to ax you what reason, or right, there is, in the first place, of stealin’ a man’s body and soul, to make a slave on him? ☜ _and then for stealin’ his money he gits for killin’ pain’ters, nights_?
☞ But the slave ain’t a _man_, and can’t be, a slave is a _thing_; he’s jist what the slave laws calls him, ☞ a chattel, property, jist like a _horse_, and like a horse _he can’t own the very straw he sleeps on_. But, never mind, ☞ there’s a judgment day a comin’ bim’by. ☜ ‘And when he maketh inquisition for blood, he remembereth them.’ You recollect you preached from that text a Sunday or two ago, and said, if my memory sarves me right, that, at the judgment day, God would require of every slaveholder in the universe, the blood of every soul he bought, and sold, and owned, _as property_; for ’twas trafficin’ in the image of the great God Almighty. Ah! that’s true, and I felt so when you said it.”