He is
trying to learn as fast as thee did when here.--W.W."

I hope the reader will pardon me for introducing these extracts. My only
apology is, the high gratification I feel in knowing that this family has
not only been greatly prospered in health and happiness, but that I am
upon the most intimate and pleasant terms with all its members, and that
they all still feel a deep and cordial interest in my welfare.

There is another distinguished individual whose sympathy has proved very
gratifying to me in my situation--I mean that true friend of the negro,
_Gerrit Smith, Esq._ I was well acquainted with the family in which Mr.
Smith married in Maryland. My attention has been fixed upon him for the
last ten years, for I have felt confident that God had set him apart for
some great good to the negro. In a letter dated Peterborough, November
7th, 1848, he says:--

"J.W.C. PENNINGTON,

"Slight as is my _personal_ acquaintance with you, I nevertheless am
well acquainted with you. I am familiar with many passages in your
history--all that part of your history extending from the time when, a
sturdy blacksmith, you were running away from Maryland oppression, down
to the present, when you are the successor of my lamented friend,
Theodore S. Wright. Let me add that my acquaintance with you has
inspired me with a high regard for your wisdom and integrity."

Give us a few more such men in America, and slavery will soon be
numbered among the things that were. A few men who will not only have
the moral courage to aim the severing blow at the chattel relation
between master and slave, without parley, palliation or compromise; but
who have also the christian fidelity to brave public scorn and
contumely, to seize a coloured man by the hand, and elevate him to the
position from whence the avarice and oppression of the whites have
degraded him. These men have the right view of the subject. They see
that in every case where the relation between master and slave is
broken, slavery is weakened, and that every coloured man elevated,
becomes a step in the ladder upon which his whole people are to ascend.
They would not have us accept of some modified form of liberty, while
the old mischief working chattel relation remains unbroken, untouched
and unabrogated.

J.W.C. PENNINGTON.

_13, Princes Square, London, August 15th_, 1849.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.

My birth and parentage--