“Having waited on the principal actors and singers of the day at the St. Charles, he had a free pass to the theatres. Used often to go behind the scenes. Waited on Blitz, Anderson, and other jugglers. Saw Anderson show up the humbug, as he called it, of spiritual manifestations. Went to church now and then. Heard some bad preachers, and some good. Heard Mr. Clapp preach. Heard Mr. Palmer preach. After hearing the latter on the duties of slaves, tried to run away. Was caught and taken to a new patent whipping-machine, recently introduced by a Yankee. Here was left for a whipping. Bought off the Yankee with five dollars, and taught him how to stain my back so as to imitate the marks of the lash. Thus no discredit was brought on the machine. A week after was sold to a Red River planter, Mr. Carberry Ratcliff. “Can never speak of this man calmly. He had a slave, a woman white as you are, sir, that he beat, and then tried to make me take and treat as my wife. When he found I had cheated him, he just had me tied up and whipped till three strong men were tired out with the work. It’s a wonder how I survived. My whole back is seamed deep with the scars. This scar over my cheek is from a blow he himself gave me that day with a strip of raw hide. He sold me to Mr. Barnwell in Texas as soon as I could walk, which wasn’t for some weeks. I left, resolving to come back and kill Ratcliff. I meant to do this so earnestly, that the hope of it almost restored me. Revenge was my one thought, day and night. I felt that I could not be at ease till that man Ratcliff had paid for his barbarity. Even now I sometimes wake full of wrath from my dreams, imagining I have him at my mercy. “I went to Texas with a bad reputation. Was put among the naughty darkies, and sent to the cotton-field. Braxton, the overseer, had been a terrible fellow in his day, but I happened to be brought to him at the time he was beginning to get scared about his soul. Soon had things my own way. Braxton made me a sort of sub-overseer; and I got more work out of the field-hands by kindness than Braxton had ever got by the lash. “One day I discovered on a neighboring plantation an old woman who proved to be my mother. She had been brought here from Louisiana. She was on the point of dying. She knew me, first from hearing my name, and then from a cross she had pricked in India ink on my breast. She hadn’t seen me for sixteen years. Had been having a hard time of it. Her hut was close by a slough, a real fever-hole, and she had been sick most of the time the last three years. “The old woman flashed up bright on finding me: gave me a long talk; told me little stories of when I was a child; told me how my father had been sold to an Alabama man, and shot dead for trying to break away from a whipping-post. All at once she said she saw angels, drew me down to her, and dropped away quiet as a lamb, so that, though my forehead lay on her breast, I didn’t know when she died.