“Well, as I was sayin’, I was born in Tuckertown, and my master’s name was Job Mather. He was a man of family and property, and had a wife and two sons, and a large plantation. He was a Quaker by profession, and used to go to the Quaker meetin’s; but afore I git through with him, I’ll show you he warn’t overstocked with Religion. He was the first and last Quaker I ever heard on, that owned a slave,[1] and he warn’t a _full-blooded Quaker_, for if he had been, he wouldn’t owned me; for a full-blooded Quaker won’t own a slave. I was the only slave he owned, and he didn’t own me ☜ but this, is the way he _come by_ me.[2] Mistress happened to have a child the same time I was born, and the little feller died. So she sent to Dinah my mother, and got me to nuss her, when I was only eight days old.”
Would to God, it could be said of any other denomination of Christians in Christendom!!
A grand distinction for some _big Doctors_ to learn!
“Well, arter I’d got weaned, and was about a year old, mother comes to mistress, and says she, ‘Mistress, have you got through with my baby?’ ‘No,’ says Mistress, ‘no Dinah, I mean to bring him up myself.’ And so she kept me, and called me Peter Wheeler, for that was my father’s name, and so I lived in master’s family almost jist like his own children.”
“The first thing I recollect was this:——Master and Mistress, went off up country on a journey, and left I and John, (John was her little boy almost my age,) with me at home, and says she as she goes away, ‘now boys if you’ll be _good_, when I come back, I’ll bring you some handsome presents.’”
“Well, we _was_ good, and when she comes back, she gives us both a suit of clothes, and mine was _red scarlet_, and it had a little coat buttoned on to a pair of trousers, and a good many buttons on ’em, all up and down be-for’ard and behind, and I had a little cap, with a good long tostle on it; and oh! when I first got ’em on, if I didn’t feel _big_, I won’t guess.”
“I used to do ’bout as I was a mind tu, until I was eight or nine year old, though Master and Mistress used to make I and John keep Sunday _’mazin strict_; yet, I remember one Sunday, when they was gone to Quaker meetin’, I and Hagar, (she was my sister, and lived with my mother, and mother was free,) well, I and Hagar went down to the creek jist by the house, a fishin’. _She_ stood on the bridge, and _I_ waded out up to my middle, and had big luck, and in an hour I had a fine basket full. But jist then I see a flouncin’ in the water, and a great monstrous big thing got hold of my hook, and yauked it arter him, pole, line, nigger and all, I’d enemost said, and if he didn’t make a squashin’ then I’m a white man. Well, Hagar see it, and she was scart almost to pieces, and off she put for the house, and left me there alone. Well, I thought sure ’nough ’twas the Devil, I’d hearn tell so much ’bout the old feller; and I took my basket and put out for the house like a white-head, and I thought I _should_ die, I was _so scart_. We got to the house and hid under the bed, all a tremblin’ jist like a leaf, afeard to stir one inch. Pretty soon the old folks comes home, and so out we crawled, and they axed us the matter, and so we up and telled ’em all about it, and Master, says he ‘why sure ’nough ’twas the Devil, and all cause you went a fishin’ on a Sunday, and if you go down there a fishin’ agin Sunday he’ll catch you both, and that’ll be the end of you two snow-balls.”