her children.  I raised her husband and I would not separate them.  She was brought back, and as they rode along in the rockaway, Boss said:  “When I am through with you I guess you won’t run away again.”  As they drove up I saw the madam go running out to meet them.  She shouted to Matilda:  “Ah! madam, you put up at the wrong hotel.”  They at once went to the barn where my wife was tied to the joist, and Boss and the madam beat her by turns.  After they had finished the whipping, Boss said, tauntingly:  “Now I am buying you and selling you—­I want you to know that I never shall sell you while my head and yours is hot.”  I was trembling from head to foot, for I was powerless to do anything for her.  My twin babies lived only six months after that, not having had the care they needed, and which it was impossible for their mother to give them while performing the almost endless labor required of her, under threats of cruel beatings.  One day not long after our babies were buried the madam followed my wife to the smoke house and said:  “I am tempted to take that knife from you, Matilda, and cut you in two.  You and old Ruben (one of the slaves) went all around the neighborhood and told the people that I killed your babies, and almost whipped you to death.”  Of course, when the slaves were accused falsely, as in this case, they were not allowed to make any reply—­they just had to endure in silence whatever was said.

* * * * *

Efforts to learn to read and write.

Thomas, the coachman, and I were fast friends.  We used to get together every time we had a chance and talk about freedom.  “Oh!” Tom would say, “if I could only write.”  I remember when Tom first began to take lessons at night from some plasterers, workmen of the neighborhood.  They saw that he was so anxious to learn that they promised to teach him every evening if he would slip out to their house.  I, too, was eager to learn to read and write, but did not have the opportunity which Tom had of getting out at night.  I had to sleep in the house where the folks were, and could not go out without being observed, while Tom had quarters in another part of the establishment, and could slip out unobserved.  Tom, however, consoled me by saying that he would teach me as soon as he knew how.  So Tom one night put a copy of some figures on the side of the barn for me to practice from.  I took the chalk and imitated him as near as I could, but my work was poor beside his, as he had been learning for some months, and could make the figures quite well and write a little.  Still I kept trying.  Tom encouraging me and telling me that I would learn in time.  “Just keep trying,” said he.  When this first lesson was over, I forgot to rub out the marks on the barn, and the next morning when Old Master Jack, who happened to be at our home just at that time, went out there and saw the copy and my imitation of it, he at once raised great excitement