sturbed. Let but the first opportunity offer, and come
what will, I am off. Meanwhile, I will try to bear up under the yoke.
I am not the only slave in the world. Why should I fret? I can bear as
much as any of them. Besides, I am but a boy, and all boys are bound
to some one. It may be that my misery in slavery will only increase my
happiness when I get free. There is a better day coming."

I shall never be able to narrate the mental experience through which it
was my lot to pass during my stay at Covey's. I was completely wrecked,
changed and bewildered; goaded almost to madness at one time, and at
another reconciling myself to my wretched condition. Everything in the
way of kindness, which I had experienced at Baltimore; all my former
hopes and aspirations for usefulness in the world, and the happy moments
spent in the exercises of religion, contrasted with my then present lot,
but increased my anguish.

I suffered bodily as well as mentally. I had neither sufficient time
in which to eat or to sleep, except on Sundays. The overwork, and the
brutal chastisements of which I was the victim, combined with that
ever-gnawing and soul-devouring thought--"_I am a slave--a slave for
life--a slave with no rational ground to hope for freedom_"--rendered me
a living embodiment of mental and physical wretchedness.

CHAPTER XVI. _Another Pressure of the Tyrant's Vice_

EXPERIENCE AT COVEY'S SUMMED UP--FIRST SIX MONTHS SEVERER THAN
THE SECOND--PRELIMINARIES TO THE CHANCE--REASONS FOR NARRATING THE
CIRCUMSTANCES--SCENE IN TREADING YARD--TAKEN ILL--UNUSUAL BRUTALITY
OF COVEY--ESCAPE TO ST. MICHAEL'S--THE PURSUIT--SUFFERING IN THE
WOODS--DRIVEN BACK AGAIN TO COVEY'S--BEARING OF MASTER THOMAS--THE SLAVE
IS NEVER SICK--NATURAL TO EXPECT SLAVES TO FEIGN SICKNESS--LAZINESS OF
SLAVEHOLDERS.

The foregoing chapter, with all its horrid incidents and shocking
features, may be taken as a fair representation of the first six months
of my life at Covey's. The reader has but to repeat, in his own mind,
once a week, the scene in the woods, where Covey subjected me to his
merciless lash, to have a true idea of my bitter experience there,
during the first period of the breaking process through which Mr. Covey
carried me. I have no heart to repeat each separate transaction, in
which I was victim of his violence and brutality. Such a narration would
fill a volume much larger than the present one. I aim only to give the
reader a truthful i