“You may judge how I felt, while I listened to this.  I wanted to ask his forgiveness, and give him all my money, and my watch, and my ring, and everything.  After they were carried back, Hen was sold to the hotel-keeper for six hundred dollars, and he was sold to a man in Natchez for fifteen hundred.  After a while, he escaped in a woman’s dress, contrived to open a communication with Hen, and succeeded in carrying her off to New York.  There he changed his woman’s dress, and his slave name of Bob Bruteman, and called himself George Falkner.  When I asked him why he chose that name, he rolled up his sleeve and showed me G.F. marked on his arm.  He said he didn’t know who put them there, but he supposed they were the initials of his name.  He is evidently impressed by our great resemblance.  If he asks me directly whether I can conjecture anything about his origin, I hardly know how it will be best to answer.  Do write how much or how little I ought to say.  Feeling unsafe in the city of New York, and being destitute of money, he applied to the Abolitionists for advice.  They sent him to New Rochelle, where he let himself to a Quaker, called Friend Joseph Houseman, of whom he hired a small hut.  There, Hen, whom he now calls Henriet, takes in washing and ironing, and there a babe has been born to them.  When the war broke out he enlisted; partly because he thought it would help him to pay off some old scores with slaveholders, and partly because a set of rowdies in the village of New Rochelle said he was a white man, and threatened to mob him for living with a nigger wife.  While they were in New York city, he and Henriet were regularly married by a colored minister.  He said he did it because he hated slavery and couldn’t bear to live as slaves did.  I heard him read a few lines from a newspaper, and he read them pretty well.  He says a little boy, son of the carpenter of whom he learned his trade, gave him some instruction, and he bought a spelling-book for himself.  He showed me some beef-bones, on which he practises writing with a pencil.  When he told me how hard he had tried to get what little learning he had, it made me ashamed to think how many cakes and toys I received as a reward for studying my spelling-book.  He is teaching an old negro, who waits upon the soldiers.  It is funny to see how hard the poor old fellow tries, and to hear what strange work he makes of it.  It must be ‘that stolen waters are sweet,’ or slaves would never take so much more pains than I was ever willing to take to learn to spell out the Bible.  Sometimes I help G.F. with his old pupil; and I should like to have Mrs. Blumenthal make a sketch of us, as I sit on the grass in the shade of some tree, helping the old negro hammer his syllables together.  My New York companions laugh at me sometimes; but I have gained great favor with G.F. by this proceeding.  He is such an ingenious fellow, that he is always in demand to make or mend something.  When I see how skilful he is with tools, I envy him.  I begin to realize what you once told me, and which did not please me much at the time, that being a fine gentleman is the poorest calling a man can devote himself to.