onveyed to the far South, seemed infinitely worse than the terrors of
death. To know, also, that I was never to consult my own will, but was,
while I lived, to be entirely under the control of another, was another
state of mind hard for me to bear. Indeed all things now made me _feel_,
what I had before known only in words, that _I was a slave_. Deep was this
feeling, and it preyed upon my heart like a never-dying worm. I saw no
prospect that my condition would ever be changed. Yet I used to plan in my
mind from day to day, and from night to night, how I might be free.

One day, while I was in this state of mind, my father gave me a small
basket of peaches. I sold them for thirty cents, which was the first money
I ever had in my life. Afterwards I won some marbles, and sold them for
sixty cents, and some weeks after Mr. Hog from Fayetteville, came to visit
my master, and on leaving gave me one dollar. After that Mr. Bennahan from
Orange county gave me a dollar, and a son of my master fifty cents. These
sums, and the hope that then entered my mind of purchasing at some future
time my freedom, made me long for money; and plans for money-making took
the principal possession of my thoughts. At night I would steal away with
my axe, get a load of wood to cut for twenty-five cents, and the next
morning hardly escape a whipping for the offence. But I persevered until I
had obtained twenty dollars. Now I began to think seriously of becoming
able to buy myself; and cheered by this hope, I went on from one thing to
another, laboring "at dead of night," after the long weary day's toil for
my master was over, till I found I had collected one hundred dollars. This
sum I kept hid, first in one place and then in another, as I dare not put
it out, for fear I should lose it.

After this I lit upon a plan which proved of great advantage to me. My
father suggested a mode of preparing smoking tobacco, different from any
then or since employed. It had the double advantage of giving the tobacco
a peculiarly pleasant flavor, and of enabling me to manufacture a good
article out of a very indifferent material. I improved somewhat upon his
suggestion, and commenced the manufacture, doing as I have before said,
all my work in the night. The tobacco I put up in papers of about a
quarter of a pound each, and sold them at fifteen cents. But the tobacco
could not be smoked without a pipe, and as I had given the former a flavor
peculiarly grateful, it o