t up to my father's profession,--that of a
cooper. When I was twenty years old, I had buried both my parents, and
was left to shift for myself. I had been for some time in the employ of
a Jewish wine-merchant, and I continued there for three years after my
father's death, when a circumstance occurred which led to my subsequent
prosperity and present degradation.

At the time that I am speaking of, I had, by strict diligence and
sobriety, so pleased my employer, that I had risen to be his foreman;
and although I still superintended and occasionally worked at the
cooperage, I was intrusted with the drawing off and fining of the wines,
to prepare them for market. There was an Ethiopian slave, who worked
under my orders, a powerful, broad-shouldered, and most malignant
wretch, whom my master found it almost impossible to manage; the
bastinado, or any other punishment, he derided, and after the
application only became more sullen and discontented than before. The
fire that flashed from his eyes, upon any fault being found by me on
account of his negligence, was so threatening, that I every day expected
I should be murdered. I repeatedly requested my master to part with him;
but the Ethiopian being a very powerful man, and able, when he chose, to
move a pipe of wine without assistance, the avarice of the Jew would not
permit him to accede to my repeated solicitations.

One morning I entered the cooperage, and found the Ethiopian fast asleep
by the side of a cask which I had been wanting for some time, and
expected to have found ready. Afraid to punish him myself, I brought my
master to witness his conduct. The Jew, enraged at his idleness, struck
him on the head with one of the staves. The Ethiopian sprang up in a
rage, but on seeing his master with the stave in his hand, contented
himself with muttering, "That he would not remain to be beaten in that
manner," and re-applied himself to his labour. As soon as my master had
left the cooperage, the Ethiopian vented his anger upon me for having
informed against him, and seizing the stave, flew at me with the
intention of beating out my brains. I stepped behind the cask; he
followed me, and just as I had seized an adze to defend myself, he fell
over the stool which lay in his way--he was springing up to renew the
attack, when I struck him a blow with the adze which entered his skull,
and laid him dead at my feet.

I was very much alarmed at what had occurred; for although I felt