A highly intelligent slave, who panted after freedom with ceaseless longings, made many attempts to get possession of himself.  For every offence he was punished with extreme severity.  At one time he was tied up by his hands to a tree, and whipped until his back was one gore of blood.  To this terrible infliction he was subjected at intervals for several weeks, and kept heavily ironed while at his work.  His master one day accused him of a fault, in the usual terms dictated by passion and arbitrary power; the man protested his innocence, but was not credited.  He again repelled the charge with honest indignation.  His master’s temper rose almost to frenzy; and seizing a fork, he made a deadly plunge at the breast of the slave.  The man being far his superior in strength, caught the arm, and dashed the weapon on the floor.  His master grasped at his throat, but the slave disengaged himself, and rushed from the apartment, having made his escape, he fled to the woods; and after wandering about for many months, living on roots and berries, and enduring every hardship, he was arrested and committed to jail.  Here he lay for a considerable time, allowed scarcely food enough to sustain life, whipped in the most shocking manner, and confined in a cell so loathsome, that when his master visited him, he said the stench was enough to knock a man down.  The filth had never been removed from the apartment since the poor creature had been immured in it.  Although a black man, such had been the effect of starvation and suffering, that his master declared he hardly recognized him—­his complexion was so yellow, and his hair, naturally thick and black, had become red and scanty; an infallible sign of long continued living on bad and insufficient food.  Stripes, imprisonment, and the gnawings of hunger, had broken his lofty spirit for a season; and, to use his master’s own exulting expression, he was “as humble as a dog.”  After a time he made another attempt to escape, and was absent so long, that a reward was offered for him, dead or alive.  He eluded every attempt to take him, and his master, despairing of ever getting him again, offered to pardon him if he would return home.  It is always understood that such intelligence will reach the runaway; and accordingly, at the entreaties of his wife and mother, the fugitive once more consented to return to his bitter bondage.  I believe this was the last effort to obtain his liberty.  His heart became touched with the power of the gospel; and the spirit which no inflictions could subdue, bowed at the cross of Jesus, and with the language on his lips—­“the cup that my father hath given me, shall I not drink it?” submitted to the yoke of the oppressor, and wore his chains in unmurmuring patience till death released him.  The master who perpetrated these wrongs upon his slave, was one of the most influential and honored citizens of South Carolina, and to his equals was bland, and courteous, and benevolent even to a proverb.