e? Will they not be suspected? Will not the whole
family be sold off as a disaffected family, as is generally the case when
one of its members flies? But a still more trying question was, how can I
expect to succeed, I have no knowledge of distance or direction. I know
that Pennsylvania is a free state, but I know not where its soil begins,
or where that of Maryland ends? Indeed, at this time there was no safety
in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, or New York, for a fugitive, except in
lurking-places, or under the care of judicious friends, who could be
entrusted not only with liberty, but also with life itself.

With such difficulties before my mind, the day had rapidly worn away; and
it was just past noon. One of my perplexing questions I had settled--I had
resolved to let no one into my secret; but the other difficulty was now to
be met. It was to be met without the least knowledge of its magnitude,
except by imagination. Yet of one thing there could be no mistake, that
the consequences of a failure would be most serious. Within my
recollection no one had attempted to escape from my master; but I had many
cases in my mind's eye, of slaves of other planters who had failed, and
who had been made examples of the most cruel treatment, by flogging and
selling to the far South, where they were never to see their friends more.
I was not without serious apprehension that such would be my fate. The
bare possibility was impressively solemn; but the hour was now come, and
the man must act and be free, or remain a slave for ever. How the
impression came to be upon my mind I cannot tell; but there was a strange
and horrifying belief, that if I did not meet the crisis that day, I
should be self-doomed--that my ear would be nailed to the door-post for
ever. The emotions of that moment I cannot fully depict. Hope, fear,
dread, terror, love, sorrow, and deep melancholy were mingled in my mind
together; my mental state was one of most painful distraction. When I
looked at my numerous family--a beloved father and mother, eleven brothers
and sisters, &c.; but when I looked at slavery as such; when I looked at
it in its mildest form, with all its annoyances; and above all, when I
remembered that one of the chief annoyances of slavery, in the most mild
form, is the liability of being at any moment sold into the worst form; it
seemed that no consideration, not even that of life itself, could tempt me
to give up the thought of flight. And then when