After leaving the steamer Otto, I resided at home, in Mr. Willi’s family, and again began to lay my plans for making my escape from slavery.  The anxiety to be a freeman would not let me rest day or night.  I would think of the northern cities that I had heard so much about;—­of Canada, where so many of my acquaintances had found refuge.  I would dream at night that I was in Canada, a freeman, and on waking in the morning, weep to find myself so sadly mistaken.

    “I would think of Victoria’s domain,
      And in a moment I seemed to be there! 
    But the fear of being taken again,
      Soon hurried me back to despair.”

Mr. Willi treated me better than Dr. Young ever had; but instead of making me contented and happy, it only rendered me the more miserable, for it enabled me better to appreciate liberty.  Mr. Willi was a man who loved money as most men do, and without looking for an opportunity to sell me, he found one in the offer of Captain Enoch Price, a steamboat owner and commission merchant, living in the city of St. Louis.  Captain Price tendered seven hundred dollars, which was two hundred more than Mr. Willi had paid.  He therefore thought best to accept the offer.  I was wanted for a carriage driver, and Mrs. Price was very much pleased with the captain’s bargain.  His family consisted besides of one child.  He had three servants besides myself—­one man and two women.

Mrs. Price was very proud of her servants, always keeping them well dressed, and as soon as I had been purchased, she resolved to have a new carriage.  And soon one was procured, and all preparations were made for a turn-out in grand style, I being the driver.

One of the female servants was a girl some eighteen or twenty years of age, named Maria.  Mrs. Price was very soon determined to have us united, if she could so arrange matters.  She would often urge upon me the necessity of having a wife, saying that it would be so pleasant for me to take one in the same family!  But getting married, while in slavery, was the last of my thoughts; and had I been ever so inclined, I should not have married Maria, as my love had already gone in another quarter.  Mrs. Price soon found out that her efforts at this match-making between Maria and myself would not prove successful.  She also discovered (or thought she had) that I was rather partial to a girl named Eliza, who was owned by Dr. Mills.  This induced her at once to endeavor the purchase of Eliza, so great was her desire to get me a wife!

Before making the attempt, however, she deemed it best to talk to me a little upon the subject of love, courtship, and marriage.  Accordingly one afternoon she called me into her room—­telling me to take a chair and sit down.  I did so, thinking it rather strange, for servants are not very often asked thus to sit down in the same room with the master or mistress.  She said that she had found out that I did not care enough about Maria to marry her.