away, with all its horrible chances.  You hide in a neighboring swamp, where you are bitten by a venomous snake, and your swollen limb becomes almost incapable of motion.  In great anguish, you drag it along, through the midnight darkness, to the hut of a poor plantation-slave, who binds on a poultice of ashes, but dares not, for fear of his life, shelter you after day has dawned.  He helps you to a deep gully, and there you remain till evening, half-famished for food.  A man in the neighborhood keeps blood-hounds, well trained to hunt runaways.  They get on your track, and tear flesh from the leg which the snake had spared.  To escape them, you leap into the river.  The sharp ring of rifles meets your ear.  You plunge under water.  When you come up to take breath, a rifle ball lodges in your shoulder and you plunge again.  Suddenly, thick clouds throw their friendly veil over the moon.  You swim for your life, with balls whizzing round you.  Thanks to the darkness and the water, you baffle the hounds, both animal and human.  Weary and wounded, you travel through the forests, your eye fixed hopefully on the North Star, which seems ever beckoning you onward to freedom, with its bright glances through the foliage.  In the day-time, you lie in the deep holes of swamps, concealed by rank weeds and tangled vines, taking such rest as can be obtained among swarms of mosquitoes and snakes.  Through incredible perils and fatigues, footsore and emaciated, you arrive at last in the States called Free.  You allow yourself little time to rest, so eager are you to press on further North.  You have heard the masters swear with peculiar violence about Massachusetts, and you draw the inference that it is a refuge for the oppressed.  Within the borders of that old Commonwealth, you breathe more freely than you have ever done.  You resolve to rest awhile, at least, before you go to Canada.  You find friends, and begin to hope that you may be allowed to remain and work, if you prove yourself industrious and well behaved.  Suddenly, you find yourself arrested and chained.  Soldiers escort you through the streets of Boston, and put you on board a Southern ship, to be sent back to your master.  When you arrive, he orders you to be flogged so unmercifully, that the doctor says you will die if they strike another blow.  The philanthropic city of Boston hears the bloody tidings, and one of her men in authority says to the public:  “Fugitive slaves are a class of foreigners, with whose rights Massachusetts has nothing to do.  It is enough for us, that they have no right to be here."[1] And the merchants of Boston cry, Amen.

[Footnote 1:  Said by the U.S.  Commissioner, George Ticknor Curtis, at a Union Meeting, in the Old Cradle of Liberty.]