My uncle Phillip asked permission to bury his sister at his own expense; and slaveholders are always ready to grant such favors to slaves and their relatives.  The arrangements were very plain, but perfectly respectable.  She was buried on the Sabbath, and Mrs. Flint’s minister read the funeral service.  There was a large concourse of colored people, bond and free, and a few white persons who had always been friendly to our family.  Dr. Flint’s carriage was in the procession; and when the body was deposited in its humble resting place, the mistress dropped a tear, and returned to her carriage, probably thinking she had performed her duty nobly.

It was talked of by the slaves as a mighty grand funeral.  Northern travellers, passing through the place, might have described this tribute of respect to the humble dead as a beautiful feature in the “patriarchal institution;” a touching proof of the attachment between slaveholders and their servants; and tender-hearted Mrs. Flint would have confirmed this impression, with handkerchief at her eyes. We could have told them a different story.  We could have given them a chapter of wrongs and sufferings, that would have touched their hearts, if they had any hearts to feel for the colored people.  We could have told them how the poor old slave-mother had toiled, year after year, to earn eight hundred dollars to buy her son Phillip’s right to his own earnings; and how that same Phillip paid the expenses of the funeral, which they regarded as doing so much credit to the master.  We could also have told them of a poor, blighted young creature, shut up in a living grave for years, to avoid the tortures that would be inflicted on her, if she ventured to come out and look on the face of her departed friend.

All this, and much more, I thought of, as I sat at my loophole, waiting for the family to return from the grave; sometimes weeping, sometimes falling asleep, dreaming strange dreams of the dead and the living.

It was sad to witness the grief of my bereaved grandmother.  She had always been strong to bear, and now, as ever, religious faith supported her.  But her dark life had become still darker, and age and trouble were leaving deep traces on her withered face.  She had four places to knock for me to come to the trapdoor, and each place had a different meaning.  She now came oftener than she had done, and talked to me of her dead daughter, while tears trickled slowly down her furrowed cheeks.  I said all I could to comfort her; but it was a sad reflection, that instead of being able to help her, I was a constant source of anxiety and trouble.  The poor old back was fitted to its burden.  It bent under it, but did not break.

XXIX.  Preparations For Escape.

I hardly expect that the reader will credit me, when I affirm that I lived in that little dismal hole, almost deprived of light and air, and with no space to move my limbs, for nearly seven years.  But it is a fact; and to me a sad one, even now; for my body still suffers from the effects of that long imprisonment, to say nothing of my soul.  Members of my family, now living in New York and Boston, can testify to the truth of what I say.