Father did not show his grief for me as mother did, but he tried to
comfort mother all he could, and at times would say to me, "Never mind,
my son, you will be a man bye and bye," but he did not know what was
passing through my mind at that time. Though I was very small I thought
that if, while a boy, my treatment was so severe, it would be much worse
when I became a man, and having had a chance to see how men were being
punished, it was a very poor consolation to me.
Finally the time came for us to go to bed, and we all knelt in family
prayer. Father thanked God for having saved me from a worse injury, and
then he prayed for mother's comfort, and also for the time which he
predicted would come, that is, the time of freedom, when I and the rest
of the children would be our own masters and mistresses; then he
commended us to God, and we all went to bed. The next morning I went to
my work with a great deal of pain. They did not send me up the road with
the horses in that condition, but I had to ride the old horses to water,
and work around the stable until I was well enough to go with the other
boys. But I am happy to say that from the time I got hurt by that horse
I was never thrown except through carelessness, neither was I afraid of
a horse after that.
Notwithstanding father and mother fretted very much about me, they were
proud of my success as a rider, but my hardships did not end here.
A short time after, I was taken to Columbia and Charleston, S.C., where
they used to have the races. That year Col. Singleton won a large sum
of money by the well-known horse, Capt. Miner, and that was the same
season that I rode my trial race. The next year, before the time of
racing, Col. Singleton died at his summer seat. After master's death,
mistress sold all the race horses, and that put an end to sporting
horses in that family.
I said that Boney Young, Col. Singleton's groom, had a brother by the
name of Charles, who trained horses for the colonel's brother, John
Singleton, Boney was a better trainer, but Charles was a better man to
the negroes. It was against the law for a slave to buy spirituous
liquors without a ticket, but Charles used to give the boys tickets to
buy rum and whiskey with. He also allowed them to steal the neighbor's
cows and hogs.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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