The Kidnapped And The Ransomed Part 23

The next year, 1846, the young master, John H. Hogun, having become of age, a.s.sumed the control of his wife's property, and hired Peter to Mr. Allen Pollock, a bookseller of Tusc.u.mbia.

Mr. Pollock had, some weeks before Christmas, proposed to Peter that he should live with him the ensuing year, and hire his own time. He had not much for him to do, he said, and after cutting his wood, putting his store in order, blacking his boots, and doing such other small jobs as might be necessary, he could get work elsewhere in town; and all he earned above the eighty-five dollars hire which Hogun must receive, should be his own. True, this arrangement was against the law, but if it were kept secret, it could do no harm.

For a long time Peter hesitated. Mr. Pollock was said to be a close, penurious man, and our student of human nature doubted the disinterestedness of his motives. Still there was a chance that he might succeed in saving something; he might, at least, procure more comforts for his family than they had yet possessed and he at length resolved to try.

So the bargain was concluded; openly with Mr. Hogun, privately between Mr. Pollock and the slave; and Peter entered, trembling, upon the now year. He had never before occupied so respectable a position. The eighty-five dollars must be earned, and that was a great sum to be raised by dimes and half dimes, for doing little jobs about town.

At a short distance from the store was Major Pope's hotel, where he engaged his board, for which he was to pay by waiting on the table. He then looked about for work; and was recommended by some friend to the teachers of the Ladies' School, as a neat and careful man, who would be capable of keeping the rooms in order, and of performing any other labor that might be required about the building. He was immediately engaged for this service, which occupied him two or three hours each day.

He also, now and then, found whitewas.h.i.+ng to do; and when extra servants were wanted on occasion of a wedding or a party, he found profitable employment. If a cook was sick, he was competent to take her place; and when some weary child of earth had finished his short pilgrimage, Peter was called upon to hollow his lowly grave.

He was at the same time hired by the month to take care of several stores--to sweep, black boots, take up ashes, and bring water; and thus he became well known to most of the business men in town.

The young gentlemen frequently gave parties at the Franklin House, then the princ.i.p.al hotel in town. They furnished the refreshments and table furniture, merely occupying the rooms of the hotel for which they paid a reasonable sum. On these occasions, Peter was invaluable. He prepared the rooms and arranged the tables, and the pleasures of the evening were never marred by neglect or carelessness in his department. Then he had a quiet way of keeping things in place, and of seeing that the guests were supplied with all conveniences throughout the evening; and after the gay company had dispersed, he returned all borrowed articles, and re-arranged the furniture of the rooms in its accustomed order.

His ready kindness, and his promptness in executing his employers'

wishes, won him the confidence and esteem of all he served; still, these numerous cares and diverse occupations were extremely fatiguing. All the day long, and often till late at night he was in active exercise of mind and body, yet though his limbs grew weary, his energies of spirit never drooped.

Thus pa.s.sed the year away. Every week or two he paid his hire to Mr. Pollock, who several times proposed to act as his treasurer.

These offers Peter declined, excusing himself by saying that he spent the most of his money to buy things for his wife and children, and so he had not much to keep.

"I don't see, then," said the gentleman, "any use in your hiring your time, if you spend all your money."

"Oh! that's what I work for," replied the slave, "to buy comforts for my family."

At the end of the year he had saved seventy-five dollars, besides having spent thirty-five dollars, during the year, on his wife and children. But this was a profound secret to all but Vina. No one in Tusc.u.mbia knew even that he hired his time. It was understood, by those for whom he labored, that Mr. Pollock permitted him to make his own bargains, and that to him he paid in all he earned.

His success this year was an astonishment to himself. It opened a new world before him. Hitherto, his only hope of escape from slavery had been in flight; but now came other thoughts.

"Seventy-five dollars in one year! How long would it take to buy myself if I could get the same chance every year? Oh! if I could be free!"

Towards the close of the year. Mr. Pollock proposed to his master to hire Peter again; but Mr. Hogan declined making a second bargain with him until he had consulted Peter.

"Well, boy," said he, a few days before Christmas, "do you want to live with Mr. Pollock again next year?"

"No, Sir," replied Peter, "I don't keer 'bout livin' with him."

"Why, I reckon he's used you well this year, and he offers to pay me up now for your hire. I reckon you'll do as well with him as any where. It's not often that a man offers to pay money before it is due."

"Well, Sir, if you hire me to Mr. Pollock, I shall have to stay with him; but there's Mr. Joseph Friedman--he'll pay you as well as Mr.

Pollock, and he'd like to hire me for next year."

The young master immediately called on Mr. Friedman, and learning that what Peter had told him was correct, he hired him to the Jew before he left the store.

The Jew! Yes; Joseph Friedman was a German Jew, who had resided in Tusc.u.mbia for six or seven years. He came there at first with a small stock of goods and opened a store, and by untiring industry and strict economy he had now acc.u.mulated a handsome little fortune.

He was small in stature, with the black hair and keen dark eyes peculiar to his race. a.s.sociated with him in business was his younger brother, Isaac, who was taller and handsomer than Joseph, but scarcely his equal in sagacity and force of character.

At the commencement of their sojourn in Tusc.u.mbia, these Jews, the first that had ever settled in that region, were regarded with suspicion and dislike. But as their stern integrity and manly independence of character became known to the citizens, the prejudice excited by their peculiarities of religion and manners gradually subsided. As business men, they gained the confidence of the public, and though they never mingled freely in society, they were no longer exposed to rudeness or neglect.

Peter during the past year, had been mysteriously attracted towards these somewhat isolated brothers. His thoughts had been intensely occupied in devising some method by which he might yet taste that liberty, which, notwithstanding he had been forty years a slave, he still felt was his right. Day and night he had pondered this subject; but one great difficulty was ever present to his mind. He knew not a man whom he could trust. If he dared to breathe, in human ear, his wish for freedom, the bold thought might be reported to his master, and from that moment he would be looked upon as unsafe property. The consequence of this might be a sale, and a journey to the low country; and then the light of hope would be forever quenched.

And even if his master should be willing to sell him to himself, what security could he have that he would not deceive him, and while he took his hard-earned ransom, retain him also in his iron grasp? His long acquaintance with slavery in every guise had made him wary. He remembered Spencer Williams of Lexington, who three times paid the price of his own redemption, and was at last sent to the hated South in chains. No wonder that Peter trembled at the thought of such a blighting of his budding hopes. No wonder that he weighed each word that fell upon his ear, in order to discern the spirit of the speaker. Oh! that he knew a man of soul so brave that he could safely confide to him his heart's great secret!

There might be many such in town; but how could he distinguish them from those whose flattering words proceeded from the deep, dark caverns of deceitful hearts?

While his ear was thus eagerly bent to catch the breath of honesty, some chance remarks of Mr. Friedman drew his attention. The Jew made no display of his opinions, or declaration of his principles; but uttered merely some careless sentence, which revealed his sympathy with the suffering, and his hatred of injustice and oppression. Peter had often performed slight services for the two brothers, and whenever he was in their presence, although no word respecting himself was uttered, he felt that he was regarded as a man.

It was this feeling which induced him, before his year expired at Mr. Pollock's, to ask Mr. Friedman to hire him for the ensuing year. If he could persuade him to do this, he could have an opportunity to become more thoroughly acquainted with his character; and perhaps--oh! how the bare idea thrilled his frame!--perhaps he should thus discover the path to liberty.

To Peter's request the Jew readily a.s.sented, and, as before related, the bargain with his master was concluded.

On the first day of January, 1847, Peter commenced his labors under the protection of Mr. Friedman. According to their private contract, he was to board and clothe himself; and then, whatever he earned above his hire should be his own. He waited on the table at a hotel, as during the previous year, to pay his board; and his clothing cost him very little--as the Friedman brothers gave him all their cast-off clothes, as well as occasionally the material for a new garment from the store. Besides these, he frequently, received presents of half-worn clothing from other young men whom he was always glad to serve; or from married ladies, of discarded articles from the wardrobe of their husbands.

These clothes, however, he never wore, but sold them to slaves from the surrounding plantations--receiving in payment, eggs, chickens, or any little products of their patches, which they brought into town for sale. These articles he conveyed to the hotel, where they were always in demand, and so were speedily, converted into money. He always appeared in the same attire--blue roundabout and trowsers, with strong shoes; and a more respectable looking servant could not be seen in all the town.

At the opening of this year, Mr. A. E. Sloan, formerly of Syracuse, N. Y., who had purchased the interest in the school of the former Princ.i.p.al, established the Tusc.u.mbia Female Seminary. Mr. Sloan was a gentleman of agreeable personal appearance, scrupulously neat in his dress and surroundings, and orderly to fastidiousness.

He determined at once to establish in the school a new system of order and discipline; and soon made, inquiries for a person competent to carry out his plans in the arrangement of the school-rooms. Peter was the first one named to him, and he immediately secured his services. This measure he afterwards found no reason to regret, for so quiet was he, and yet so prompt and regular in the performance of his duties, that soon his presence, for a few hours each morning, seemed indispensable to the comfort of the school. A few weeks later, Mr. G. H. King, of Northampton, Ma.s.s., came on to teach music. He, too, soon learned Peter's excellent traits of character, and gave him employment whenever he had pianos to move, or any work to be done which required carefulness and prompt.i.tude.

He was now employed about the school-rooms a much greater proportion of his time than he had been during the preceding year.

His grateful love for Mrs. Stedman had predisposed him in favor of Northern ladies; and as at the Seminary he ever received kind looks and pleasant words, he soon became warmly attached to all the teachers. Yet he never confided to one of them his secret. They regarded him as an embodiment of good humor and content; never imagining that the idea of freedom had been struggling in his breast for years. Once or twice, he says, he was on the point of opening his heart to one of the young ladies, but when he tried to speak the great hope that was swelling in his breast, something seemed to choke him and he could not utter it. He took an opportunity however, to sound Messrs. Sloan and King on the subject of slavery; and they represented the condition of the slaves as so far above that of the free blacks at the North, that he judged it would be idle to look to them for sympathy in his one engrossing hope.

"Why, Peter," said Mr. King, "negroes in the North do not fare half as well as you, and they are not so well thought of. Few people will employ them or trust them they are shunned and disliked. To tell the truth, most of them deserve no better treatment; for they are an idle, worthless set of fellows."

All this did not discourage Peter. A voice within him whispered, "Toil on! Heed not such words as these! Liberty is before you; and you have drunk too deep in slavery to believe that freedom would render you less happy, or less worthy of esteem."

The confidence between the worthy Jew and his faithful servant was constantly on the increase; yet, as the year drew near its close, and Mr. Friedman made no advances towards hiring him for the next, Peter became uneasy. Several other persons had proposed hiring him, but he had told them all that he thought Mr. Friedman wished to keep him another year.

At length, when Christmas was very near, he one day saw his young master across the street, and he resolved to terminate his suspense. So he approached the Jew. "Look yer, sir," said he, "ain't you willin' to do the same by me next year that you have done?"

"Yes, Peter."

"Well, are you satisfied with the way I have done this year?"

"Yes;--are you satisfied?"

"Yes, sir, to be sure I am: and if you're willin' to do agin like you've done this year, why don't you go and hire me? Thar's my master, over yon."

"I see him there, but I will not run to speak to him."

"Well, sir," exclaimed the delighted slave, "I'll tell him you want to hire me; and we shan't have no new bargain to make; if you'll do like you have done, so will I."

The conference ended, and soon Peter was hired for another year to Joseph Friedman.

CHAPTER XXVII.

PETER BUYS HIMSELF.

PETER commenced the year 1848 with high hopes. His last year's gains had greatly encouraged him, for he had laid up, besides expending over thirty dollars for his family, one hundred and five dollars; which, with thirty dollars which he had saved before he hired his time, and the seventy-five that he had acc.u.mulated while with Mr. Pollock, made two hundred and ten dollars now in his possession.