Peter was a devout Episcopalian and took great pleasure in helping the young people decorate the church.  He would take us with him and show us how to make evergreen wreaths.  Like Mary’s lamb, where’er he went we were sure to go.  His love for us was unbounded and fully returned.  He was the only being, visible or invisible, of whom we had no fear.  We would go to divine service with Peter, Christmas morning and sit with him by the door, in what was called “the negro pew.”  He was the only colored member of the church and, after all the other communicants had taken the sacrament, he went alone to the altar.  Dressed in a new suit of blue with gilt buttons, he looked like a prince, as, with head erect, he walked up the aisle, the grandest specimen of manhood in the whole congregation; and yet so strong was prejudice against color in 1823 that no one would kneel beside him.  On leaving us, on one of these occasions, Peter told us all to sit still until he returned; but, no sooner had he started, than the youngest of us slowly followed after him and seated herself close beside him.  As he came back, holding the child by the hand, what a lesson it must have been to that prejudiced congregation!  The first time we entered the church together the sexton opened a white man’s pew for us, telling Peter to leave the Judge’s children there.  “Oh,” he said, “they will not stay there without me.”  But, as he could not enter, we instinctively followed him to the negro pew.

Our next great fete was on the anniversary of the birthday of our Republic.  The festivities were numerous and protracted, beginning then, as now, at midnight with bonfires and cannon; while the day was ushered in with the ringing of bells, tremendous cannonading, and a continuous popping of fire-crackers and torpedoes.  Then a procession of soldiers and citizens marched through the town, an oration was delivered, the Declaration of Independence read, and a great dinner given in the open air under the trees in the grounds of the old courthouse.  Each toast was announced with the booming of cannon.  On these occasions Peter was in his element, and showed us whatever he considered worth seeing; but I cannot say that I enjoyed very much either “general training” or the Fourth of July, for, in addition to my fear of cannon and torpedoes, my sympathies were deeply touched by the sadness of our cook, whose drunken father always cut antics in the streets on gala days, the central figure in all the sports of the boys, much to the mortification of his worthy daughter.  She wept bitterly over her father’s public exhibition of himself, and told me in what a condition he would come home to his family at night.  I would gladly have stayed in with her all day, but the fear of being called a coward compelled me to go through those trying ordeals.  As my nerves were all on the surface, no words can describe what I suffered with those explosions, great and small, and my fears lest King George and