t,
in preference to going on to find entertainment among their own class of
people. And we believe that the whites are bound to admit, that the
experiment of the Wilberforce colony proves that the colored man can not
only take care of himself, but is capable of improvement; as industrious
and intelligent as themselves, when the yoke is taken from off their
necks, and a chance given them to exercise their abilities. True, many of
them had just escaped from cruel task-masters; ignorant of almost every
thing but the lash,--but the air of freedom so invigorated and put new
life into their weary bodies, that they soon became intelligent and
thrifty.

Among the settlers might be gathered many a thrilling narrative, of
suffering and hair-breadth escapes from the slave-land,--one of which I
will tell as 'twas told to me.

In a small rude cabin, belonging to one of the large plantations in
Virginia, sat at a late hour of the night, an afflicted slave-man and his
devoted wife, sad and weeping. At length the husband repeated what he
before had been saying:

"I tell you, wife, we must flee from this place, without delay. Oh, I
cannot endure the idea of seeing you sold for the Southern market, to say
nothing of myself; and we shall most likely be separated, which I can't
bear! Oh, Rosa, the thought distracts me,--I can't bear it!"

"Are you sure," said Rosa, "that master thinks of such a frightful doom
for us?"

"Oh yes, I know it; I heard master to-day making a bargain with the slave
dealer that has been hanging about here so long; and when it was finished,
I heard him reading over the list, and our names, wife, are the first on
it."

"Oh, dear!" sobbed the wife, "we shall certainly be retaken and whipped
to death; or else we shall starve in the wilderness! Oh, it is very hard
to be compelled to leave all our friends and the old plantation where we
were born!"

"Yes; it is both hard and unjust," said Joe, and an indignant frown
contracted his brow,--"here is our birth-place, and here, for forty years
have I toiled early and late to enrich my master; and you, my poor wife, a
few years less; and now we are to be sold, separated, and all without a
choice of our own. We must go, Rosa. If we die, let us die together!"

"It shall be as you say, Joe," she replied, "but it frightens me to think
of the hardships of the way, and the danger of being recaptured."

"Courage, wife: no fate can be worse than the one designed for us; an