When Joseph was about seven years of age, he was sent over the mountains to school.  The little boy was very much puzzled when he first saw a house that was plastered inside.  He had never in his life seen anything but a cabin built of logs.  He could not understand how a plastered house was built.  It seemed to him like something that had grown that way.

When supper time came in this plastered house, he saw a teacup and saucer for the first time in his life.  The people in his neighborhood used wooden bowls to drink out of.  But here he saw what seemed to him to be a little cup standing in a bigger one.  He had never heard of coffee.  He only knew that the brownish-looking stuff in his cup was not milk, or hominy, or soup.  What to do with the little cups, or how to make use of the spoon that was in them, he could not tell, so he watched the big folks handle their cups and spoons.  He drank the coffee just as they did, but he disliked it very much.  It made the tears come into his eyes to drink it.  When he got his cup nearly empty, it was filled again.  He did not dare to say that he had had enough, and he did not know what to do.  At last he saw one man turn his empty cup bottom upward in the saucer, and lay his little spoon across the bottom of the cup.  That was the custom in those days.  He saw that this man’s cup was not filled any more.  So Joseph drank his coffee as quickly as possible, turned his cup over in the saucer, and laid the spoon across the bottom.  He was delighted that he did not have to drink any more coffee.

KIDNAPPED BOYS.

In the days when our country belonged to England, white people were brought here to be sold.  Some of these were poor people who could not get a good living in England.  They came over to this country without any money.  The captain of the ship in which they came sold them in this country to pay their passage.

Men and women who were sold had to serve four years; and boys and girls, a longer time.  The person sold was just like a slave until his time was out.  The man who had bought him might beat him, or sell him to another master.  Many of these white slaves did not get enough to eat.

Here are some stories of boys who were brought to this country and sold before the Revolution.  They are all true stories.

THE STORY OF PETER WILLIAMSON.—­TWICE A SLAVE.

One day a boy named Peter Williamson was walking along the streets of Aberdeen in Scotland.  The little fellow was eight years old.  Two men met him, and asked him to go on board a ship with them.  When he got on board, he was put down in the lower part of the ship with other boys.  The ship sailed to America with twenty boys.  Like Peter, the other lads had been stolen from their parents.  They were taken to Philadelphia and sold, to work for seven years.