Of the Doctor, David said, that “he was clever, but a Catholic;” he also said, that he thought his wife was “tolerable clever,” although he had never been placed under her where he would have had an opportunity of learning her bad traits if she had any.

The Doctor had generously bargained with David, that he could have himself by paying $1000; he had likewise figured up how the money might be paid, and intimated what a nice thing it would be for “Dave” to wake up some morning and find himself his own man.  This was how it was to be accomplished:  Dave was to pay eighty-five dollars annually, and in about twelve years he would have the thousand, and a little over, all made up.  On this principle and suggestion Dave had been digging faithfully and hard, and with the aid of friends he had nearly succeeded.  Just when he was within sight of the grand prize, and just as the last payment was about to be made, to Dave’s utter surprise the Doctor got very angry one day about some trifling matter (all pretension) and in his pretended rage he said there were too many “free niggers” going about, and he thought that Dave would do better as a slave, etc.

After that, all the satisfaction that he was able to get out of the Doctor, was simply to the effect, that he had hired him to Mr. Morrison for one hundred and fifty dollars a year.  After his “lying and cheating” in this way, David resolved that he would take his chances on the Underground Rail Road.  Not a spark of faith did he have in the Doctor.  For a time, however, before the opportunity to escape offered, he went to Mr. Morrison as a waiter, where it was his province to wait on six of the Judges of the Supreme Court of the United States.  In the meantime his party matured arrangements for their trip, so Dave “took out” and left the Judges without a waiter.  The more he reflected over the nature of the wrongs he had suffered under, the less he thought of the Doctor.

Joe, who also came with this band, was half Anglo-Saxon; an able-bodied man, thirty-four years of age.  He said, that “Miss Elizabeth Gordon, a white woman living in Alexandria,” claimed him.  He did not find much fault with her.  She permitted him to hire his time, find his own clothing, etc., by which regulation Joe got along smoothly.  Nevertheless he declared, that he was tired of wearing the yoke, and felt constrained to throw it off as soon as possible.  Miss Gordon was getting old, and Joe noticed that the young tribe of nephews and nieces was multiplying in large numbers.  This he regarded as a very bad sign; he therefore, gave the matter of the Underground Rail Road his serious attention, and it was not long ere he was fully persuaded that it would be wisdom for him to tarry no longer in the prison-house.  Joe had a wife and four children, which were as heavy weights to hold him in Virginia, but the spirit of liberty prevailed.  Joe, also, left two sisters, one free, the other a slave.  His wife belonged to the widow Irwin.  She had assured her slaves, that she had “provided for them in her will,” and that at her death all would be freed.  They were daily living on the faith thus created, and obviously thought the sooner the Lord relieved the old mistress of her earthly troubles the better.